This Wasn’t the Plan... But It’s Working For Now!

It's the day after a major hamstring injury, and against all odds, we’re back in action! Today we walk the entire flock of ewes and lambs back to the home farm — no quad bike, just determination (and a bit of hobbling!). With the help of Robbie, Cian, and Luke, we manage the big move without mismothering issues, and we’re amazed at how well lambing is going this year. Minimal lambing assistance, very few losses, and a strong, healthy group of lambs out at grass.

In this video, we talk about why we chose to walk the sheep instead of using a quad, how the lambs are performing outside compared to the lambing shed, and how important good teamwork is during busy lambing seasons.

If you're interested in sheep farming, lambing management, handling ewes and lambs, or farm life in springtime, you're in the right place! Thanks for watching and supporting the channel.

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[colinwientjens]

Hey mate, if you want to keep recording with the tags and scanner, you’ll probably just have to lamb them in smaller mobs outside. I think max mob size is 50 ewes. Get your scanning results down to the day and group them accordingly. Can just divide paddocks up with electric wires, if each group is lambing tight, once they all done and tagged you just roll up the wires. Can also dna test all your ewes and rams and match them up for performance later, probably more expensive but it’s the least physical work.

[barney]

Hi David. I'm an outdoor lambing man myself. I'm not saying my way is right and everyone else is wrong but it works for me. When I am vaccinating the ewes 6 weeks pre lambing I number the ewes and record tag numbers to lambing numbers. I lamb my singles in so they don't get too much grass and hard lambing. All they get is good quality May silage. I keep the ewe lambs in for lambing just easier to catch if you have issues. The twins are out and as they lamb I catch them give colostrum etc and number the lambs. Catching them in the field is easy enough. I have a quad trailer like yours. Just open the gate and leave in the lambs and the ewe will jump in after the lambs. Works for me I would be slow to change anything. Good luck with them and mind the foot

[MichaelBonner-mf]

It’s surely all about the weather. when it’s changeable as is the nature of Ireland you are in control with indoor but obviously more work. Also likely depends on your bred of sheep. For example Suffolk tend to be softer and need more care and want to die it seems when we had them

[sheepdogman]

Your a top man david with a great team behind you

[ciarabeattie]

Another good video, glad to see the main man back from his sun holiday 😉

[kelvinpipe]

What a great crew, so good together 👍🐑🐑🐏

[DeirdreHickey-nxnt]

Look after that leg of yours David. Ewes and lambs are looking great. I hope the weather stays good for you.

[farmerslife]

Well lad that was a great job with your class sheep 🐑 and lambs and keep up the good work with them 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

[lindaarmstrongjackman]

Hope lambing goes well and the weather cooperates. 😊

[MstresVampy]

So just through observation of other farms from ur parts of the world, foot bath maybe help w the warm up n the hoof issues tht seem to happen around same time.. ❤❤
Heal fast n rest for goodness sakes.. even if tht means no vlogs for a bit.. ur health n farm always come first love the content here❤

[TO-spdo]

Thanks for the videos I love watching from the USA

[wendyrowland]

It helps that you are working with a compliant breed. I think that may be because the breed, developed on the Lleyn Peninsular, when rural communities in the past were much mire isolated, the ewe reared her lamb and then went on to be milked so that the farmers could make enough cheese to get them through the winter. There is definitely some Texel introduced to improve conformation.

[Budgie-Vic]

Outdoor lambing is a massively different when the weather is bad! Totally diifierent kettle of fish than last year!!

[PaulStead-si]

We lamb outside, no feeding, and do all the recording, dam, lambing ease, tagging, weighing and navel spraying. We only lamb about 75. It takes about a minute per lamb to do everything. Our ewes are management tagged so we don’t have to catch them to read their tags. I walk round twice per day to record lambs and try to do the lambs before they are 6 to 8 hours old, before they can run too fast. I use a crook if necessary. You can soon tell the good mothers, and the bad ones, because they are either in your face or over the other side of the paddock. You can also tell if they have had a good suck. It was just starting to rain when I was lambing the last one, with a lot of rain promised so I put a plastic mack on immediately, this morning it was full of milk and toasty warm. I also macked a set of twins from a shearling and she was tending to walk away from one, again this morning full and warm.

[TifJones-ps]

I think put the question out there to other sheep farmers that performance and lamb outside - in NZ most don't performance record but often shift the newly lambed pairs off the ground away from the pregrant ewes (fresh clean grass) - just by going through a gate from one paddock to another - if you had a holding pen on the other side of the gate so shutting the gate completes the holding pen then it would be easier to performance record each set each day - I think the key is that performance recording has to be done each day from the beginning so it is not such a big job

[irishdancer]

David, I truly wish you a speedy recovery SOON! I enjoyed your video. The sun is beautiful!

[MarkMcDonald-fx]

A great video I Lamb Lleyn’s out door for years before I got easycares great sheep last year was the worse month of April ever I think I never go back to indoor lambing the golden rule about outdoor lambing is don’t go near them after dark you might fix 1 problem when sheep settled down for the night with lambs a few lambs can get lost from the mother and you have a mess. Hope you leg get ok hopefully you got a shot of hepvac p it looks like Black Leg

[justinowens]

There's another sheep farmer out your way who uses a long aluminum pole with a little u bent into the end of to catch his baby sheep and it works awesome. Maybe it could help you from getting hurt and you don't have to run as far to catch them. Love your videos. Watch them from the USA

[budnspud]

Maybe because they walk more outdoors they help get the babies in position 😊

[rescuecow]

The biggest challenge we have with outdoor lambing is predation, mainly crows badgers and foxes.despite this I still prefer outdoor lambing.