We got off to our now traditional bad start to lambing on 16 February, a few days later than predicted by the ram turn-out date.

And, like they say about buses, you wait ages for one and then two come along together. Or in our case, seven come along together within 24 hours.

We’re still slowly building numbers and have just 26 ewes to lamb this year, so seven in quick succession put our housing arrangements under a little pressure.

War zone

After two days of what my brother Tony called a war zone, the net result was two stillborn lambs, one ewe without milk, and two ewes rejecting their lambs. We knuckled down and, with no small effort, the two rejecters eventually decided it was easier to let their lambs drink than continue to fight with the two humans.

The milkless one had lambed a week before her time so, while we kept her lamb alive with substitute colostrum, she slowly came into milk and both ewe and lamb are fine now.

Change of luck

With the hard cases out of the way, we got a good run after that. Several sets of twins, born unassisted and up drinking their mothers, greeted us on fine dry sunny mornings in the shed.

The hard cases and a few others were even turned out to a good pick of grass and all was rosy in the garden.

Then the news started filtering through that there was a snowstorm predicted.

You have to be an optimist to be a farmer, and the optimist in me went into overdrive at the snowstorm news.

“We mightn’t get it too bad.”

“Sure the weather forecasters have to say it’ll be bad, just in case.”

“'Tis the newspapers and RTE making a big deal out of nothing.”

Right up until the first of the snow started, I was in denial. But as a precaution, we brought back in the ewes and lambs that were out on the lovely pick of grass.

Snow starts

And then it started snowing. And it didn’t stop. At time of writing, it still hasn’t stopped. But thankfully it is slowly turning sleety and in a few days, everything can go back out again.

A few more have lambed since and there haven’t been any problems. It’s all just extra work when you’ve animals inside and have to hand-feed them.

Having said that, adverse weather brings out the best in people. One uncle turned up trumps with extra straw for us. Another uncle provided water drums to tide things over after the pipes froze.

There are similar pictures and stories all over social media of neighbours helping neighbours. We will certainly lose something of our nature if rural depopulation continues and farms are forced to become ever more business-like. That will be a cold environment for man and beast – pardon the pun.

Kieran Sullivan and his brother farm part-time in Co Waterford. You can follow him on Twitter: @kieran_sullivan

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