Monday 12 January 2009

First Lambs


Mother looking over her new lamb.
The first two lambs were born on Sunday, coinciding with the full moon. We normally have had a few lambs born by mid December and peak lambing time is generally around the first half of January. We assume lambing has started later this year due to the fact that we had many mothers giving birth twice last year in January and again in June. Of the two lambs born on Sunday, one was white and the other black with a small white mark on its forehead; characteristic of the Xalda race.


The mothers are normally quite protective staying by the lambs most of the time. Xaldas evolved along side wolves and this is part of the reason why they are so agile and wary of unfamiliar beings. There are no wolves on this side of the river valley, but we do have a big problem with foxes which come and try to take the young lambs (as well as the chickens.)


The (proud?) father.

Like a lot of Europe we have been having extremely cold weather with minimums of minus 4ºC , some snow on the farm and lots of snow on the mountains. The lambs and mothers don’t mind the cold weather and you often see them sleeping outside completely covered in frost when they could have slept inside the stable if they had wanted to.

Sheep eating from the hay stack, with frost on the ground and snow on the mountains.

3 comments:

Samantha Burch said...

I like the black lamb, it looks nice with that small white mark.

Como sabes que a los corderos no les importa el frio....

love sam

Nigel and Joann Burch said...

Thats a good question; How do we know the lambs dont mind the cold? Well when your with the animals alot you can sense their fealings. The sheep dont like it wet and windy, then they go running straight to the stable. But when it is cold they just sit there quite happily, it must be their thick coats.

Samantha Burch said...

Ya, pero eso es una madre, los corderos no tinene tanta lana como las madres, por lo que están más expuestos al frio que sus madres.

Supongo que es una forma de que su cuerpo se acostumbre a esas temperaturas para que desde pequeños trabajen el cuerpo interno y asi como por ejemplo fluya más calurosamente su sangre, y por lo tanto no les molesta tanto el frio. es una suposición

love sam

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Hotel Posada del Valle is a small hotel in Asturias Northern Spain surrounded by its own organic farm and where we are passionate about organic farming, food, and sustainable livelihoods. In this Blog those of us who live and work at Hotel Posada del Valle open a door to share with all of you who are interested in what we are doing.