Lambing springs into season

Lambing at John and Kim Lacey's place west of Glasgow started about 10 days ago, just in time for the spring weather. 

Kim Lacey said this year is a lot kinder in that respect than last year was.

The Laceys check the flock every two hours around the clock. They put the newborn lambs and their mother into “jugs,” small pens in the lambing barn where they spend a couple of days bonding with each other. Then the lambs' tails are docked, the ewe and her lambs are paint branded with the same number, and they are turned out to pasture.

The sheep mostly have twins, but this year several had triplets and one had quadruplets. A sheep has the best success raising just two lambs, so the extra ones are taken off the ewe and put into the bum lamb flock. They are fed with bottles and graduate to using the rubber nipples on a bucket of replacement milk. 

The trick is to keep Jack, the huge friendly Spanish mastiff-Great Pyrenees puppy, out of the bucket. He is supposed to grow up to be the constant guardian of the flock out in the field.

The Laceys have a fall lambing too, to sell in February for the Easter market. It's just diversification, Kim Lacey said, and the prices are higher then than in September when these lambs will be sold.

The Laceys have raised sheep on the former Boyd Maag place on the Tampico Road since 1995.