Getting ready again to play the wild and woolly role of midwife

Mar 18 2008 by Liz Shankland, Western Mail

AS SOME of you know, I’m not the most patient of people when it comes to making small-talk with doting parents or grandparents about their offspring. Over the years I’ve developed an extremely short attention span when children are the focus of the conversation. Maybe it’s because I was widowed at 31, and didn’t have the chance to give my son Josh a brother or sister.

Instead of being surrounded by siblings, he was surrounded by animals – lots of them.

I think I’ve developed a kind of mental cut-out switch. Whenever talk turns to pregnancy or child-rearing, a sort of timer starts counting down inside me; after a couple of seconds’ worth of tolerance, something clicks and I start thinking of other things.

I was at a rather splendid dinner on Saturday night with Gerry (the current Mr Shankland) and, as there was a heavily pregnant lady at the table, there was naturally a lot of jolly baby talk going on.

Although I didn’t get involved, I did, however, have my mind on birthing matters, because it won’t be long until I’m playing midwife again.

My little flock of seven ewes are about three weeks away from lambing and I’m starting to get the jitters. Breeding sheep is like a voyage into the unknown; some ewes drop their lambs without any problem whatsoever, while others require the kind of medical attention most people only see on TV’s Casualty.

Last year was my first attempt at lambing without supervision and it presented me with a catalogue of horrors: a difficult delivery of twins; a stillborn; and the piece de resistance, a prolapse followed by a death. And all this in a flock of just five ewes. Bad luck or what?

At least this year I know what to expect, but it doesn’t make it any easier. I’ve already started packing my medical bag with all the essential bits and pieces, and I’ve dusted off my sheep husbandry books and stuck Post-It notes on the relevant pages, for quick reference in case of an emergency.

I’m hoping that the rain is going to hold off for a while so that the ground has the chance to dry out properly, otherwise it’s going to be a nightmare getting the Land Rover in and out of the fields, and I’ll probably end up carrying everything up and down the hill instead.

Mind you, it could be a lot worse. Oogie McGuire, a regular online reader of this column in Colorado, has been farming with several feet of snow on the ground since Christmas.

She keeps in touch regularly and emailed me after reading a piece I wrote a few weeks ago about my sheep getting bored and wandering all over the place looking for better grass to eat.

As you can imagine, with so much snow on the ground, her Black Welsh Mountain sheep are driven to distraction looking for something to graze, and they’ve become real escapologists – so much so that Oogie has to chain all the gates to contain them.

“A clever ewe figured out how to rotate the slider bar to unlock the gate and then slide the bar to open the gate and then push it so she and her friends could have fun,” she explained.

I know I complain all the time about our wet weather here, but the thought of keeping livestock in such extreme weather conditions is too much to bear thinking about. Oogie even had to install heaters in the water tanks to prevent them from freezing.

Paradoxically, having a heavy fall of snow can be a good thing, because irrigation is always a problem where Oogie lives. However, if it all melts at once, there will be flooding, and the summer irrigation water will all disappear, too.

“I’m hoping for a slow and extended mud season – however much of a hassle that is,” says Oogie.

Personally, I’ve had enough of mud for one year, thank you very much – but it all goes to show that we all have to face different problems.

Write to Liz Shankland c/o Western Mail, Blue Street, Carmarthen SA31 3LQ. Please enclose an SAE for a reply. Or email downtoearthliz@hotmail.co.uk