The First of the 2015 Lambs, Enjoying the Sun

today is the first really nice day since we started lambing and I took a few photos of the ewes and lambs at their evening feed.   Plenty of lambs this year and we have a rather complicated method of identification.  Firstly all the ewes are sprayed with a number and the lambs with the same number.  Single lambs get a blue number, twins red and triplets blue and red.  This means we can see who belongs to who at a glance.   These numbers do not last very long and the ewes loose it  fairly quickly but it is very helpful in the first few weeks.
The pedigree sheep have to be carefully tagged and recorded so that we can tell later in the summer exactly which lamb belongs to which ewe to register them.  So the lambs get a numbered tag in their ear at about 1 day old and this number is recorded and the ewe's number as well.  Towards the end of the summer their details are then sent to the Wensleydale Association and a pedigree tag is issued for each lamb with its individual number,  my flock number and the year it was born and this is put into the lamb's ear.

 Most of the lambs are not pedigree as I only need a few for replacement each year