Marking Lambs

Lambs...

The lambs that were born early are growing quickly so we had to do some marking on Monday. There were only forty-seven of them, but it was slow going with some novices working on the cradle.
Anais from France has been staying with us through the helpXchange program, and although she has never worked on a farm Roger got her helping to vaccinate lambs and do the earmarks. I don't think she liked the blood very much, but she stuck it out.

Matthew and Jake getting the lambs into the catching pen.

Hugh watching at a safe distance.

Bobby, tied up so he didn't chase lambs.

Roger shows Anais how to vaccinate a lamb.

Anais's delicate hands, cutting an earmark.

Close-up of the earmark.

This lamb has no idea what is coming...

The strangest thing was that we were expecting that the lambs were merino lambs (we have always had merinos), but when we got them into the pen it was obvious that some of them were merino/poll dorset cross lambs (the Goodings who looked after the farm last year have Poll Dorset rams). And it was really hard to tell what they were when they were in the cradle. I still think Roger probably mulesed some cross-bred lambs...

Roger starts to mules a merino lamb. (Don't ask!)