Wales over Easter in that vast tract of nothing between CyB and Pumlumon

Nothing that is apart from sheep. Lots of sheep. LOADS of sheep

The conditions were a bit shit to say the least and sadly quite a few of the sheep were dead or dying. Sadder still were the lambs alongside dead ewes – its not very often I have bleating lambs running after me and I wondered how best to help them or if indeed they actually need any help.

Leave them alone/take them to the nearest flusher bucket/sheep pen?

Probably let the farmer do their job, they will be doing rounds there to pick up and sort these things out. Was at my folks on the weekend and they have thankfully got enough space to have kept nearly all of the new ones inside for now but they are going to have to go out and brave the weather shortly.

It’s sad but also slightly inevitable given the bleak weather for this time of year and the duration of it.

There will be some very stressed farmers about many who will be close to snapping, so another good reason to let them deal with it.

Welshfarmer on here would be able to answer your question, but I imagine he’s either trying to catch some sleep or actually out there right now. It’s a tough lambing season this year, so they’ll be going through the wringer, and this weekend’s snow will have caused plenty of problems.

Try tweeting Herdy Shepherd, he is often answering these kind of questions and is generally a great person to follow anyway.

Phone the National Trust or the Woodland Trust and they will send idiots out who hate sheep and sheep farms. Then people that are not from the countryside will come along and tell farmers that have been on the land for generations that their sheep are responsible for flooding and global warming and they need to irradicate the fells of sheep to be replaced by trees. They will use trendy right on phrases like re-wilding and stewardship of the land whilst destroying the lively hood of struggling sheep farmers that already earn a pittance.

The National Trust like to buy farmserror in Cumbria by massively over bidding to ensure they win .  This leaves no hope of local farmers to purchase and run the farm. They will then sell the farm house off at a big profit separate to the farm land.

According to one militant representative of the Woodland Trust who’s sole goal in life appears to be the irradication of Sheep from the fells in Cumbria, they did a survey of hillwalkers to see what they expect to see on a Lakeland Fell. Allegedly out of hundreds of people not one person said sheep.

As someone that lives in an area of prolific sheep farming and is surrounded by sheep farms and have many friends that are sheep farmers, I think The National Trust and the Woodland Trust are full of s##t.

None of that answered the original question but I feel better for sharing!

..if passing a farm along the way call in to see if anyone is around and give an approximate location of what you saw …it may not be that farmers sheep but he sure as hell would know who they belonged to ..

All of the above! One of the “advantages” of proper hill sheep farming is that it is a semi natural system where original grazing species (deer, goats, mountain sheep) have been replaced by semi ferral, barely domesticated but very hardy breeds of sheep. They are more or less left to fend for themselves in just the same way the original grazing stock would have done. Darwin in action. If it survives and breeds, its’ prodigy will go on to produce stronger and better lines for future. The big difference is of course that there are very few predators and scavengers left that benefit from these natural deaths or motherless lambs running round. All of them have been replaced by the one top predator, man. So the only thing finding death and weakness are well-fed people enjoying a bit of leisure time in the countryside. Hence it all comes across as a bit yucky. I can assure you that nature is a lot like that though outside of the un-natural environments we have created for ourselves.

By all means drop by the nearest farm house and point them in the general direction. If it is a true mountain flock there will be little that can be done save perhaps rescuing the lambs if they can even be caught. Otherwise, I would not lose too much sleep over it. Such struggles have been going on since life on the planet began and will continue to do so for some time yet.

I get the feeling that this year has been particularly trying for our sheep farming friends. Deciding when to arrange the tupping is always a bit of a gamble, but this weather has caused even more problems than usual. No harm in letting the farmer know if you can. Lambs are income and they wont want to lose any that can be saved.

I know that lots of farmers have been delaying tupping based on an expectation of current weather cycles.

Yes, friends of ours don’t start lambing until next week, so hopefully it will work out OK for them. We are a long way north though and I can understand the temptation to go early as well.

“Lambs are income and they wont want to lose any that can be saved.”

except that, unfortunately, a hill lamb will cost more to save than it is worth. It costs about £50 in milk powder and extra creep feed to rear a lamb without a mum. Just about economical with the labour input if you can sell a good fat texel cross at £80. Not so good if it is a welsh mountain lamb that is worth £45 at best. Sometimes the first loss is the best loss.

IT dude currently staying on a hill farm in Galloway. Lambing started in earnest this week and it’s been heartbreaking to listen to the stories of dead lambs from a mix of exposure and the local fox population – in fact, our host showed his biggest smile while telling me that two foxes won’t be bothering his sheep again.

I asked about lambing on the hills Vs bringing them down and said that the losses were very similar and that generally the sheep seem to do better when left on the hills. I don’t know enough to second guess him, but it’s a seriously hard work job! He’s out on the hills several times each day to check on his ewes and to bring them down if they need help.

Tough life, for both farmer and sheep.

My brother has, partly, gone the opposite direction. He runs the family farm on the edge of the Lakes, it’s roughly at 200 metres a.s.l. When my dad was alive, it used to be that we’d aim for lambing to start around the 5th April. There’d be a few early ones that the tup had got to without us realising but usually everything would ramp up around now. The date was chosen to hopefully align with the grass getting growing and also that the lambs would get to a market ready state at a different time to other farmers so there wasn’t a glut forcing down prices.

He now lambs in two batches – one in late Jan to early Feb and the second in mid April. There’s a few farmers I know who do this.

I remember many years with bad weather during lambing, anything from driving horizontal rain for weeks on end to 30cm of snow (that was 1981 – what the sensationalist press would now call a “beast from the east”). Lambs from fell breeds (Herdwicks, Swaledales, Dalesbreds and the like) have a thicker, denser fleece and can cope better than the cross-breeds like Mules which have very fine fleeces. The Mule lambs need a few days to get going before they can cope.

Large lambing sheds are now quite common in the Lakes so the death rate of newborn lambs is lower. This has had (at least) one unintended consequence: ravens used to scavenge on lamb carcasses but these have all but disappeared so the ravens are struggling to find enough to feed their young.

@welshfarmer – thanks for providing some real world perspective