Pet Lambs at Pry House Farm

Bottle Feeding a Pet Lamb

Hungry mouths need lots of bottle!

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A visit to Pry House Farm during lambing time is always special.   The fields surrounding the house are full of ewes and lambs so there is plenty to see.  If you are lucky you may get to bottle feed a lamb or two!  Pet lambs are lambs that are not being reared by their mother.  Most ewes can rear two lambs successfully but not always and sometimes we have to make one a pet lamb and yes, occassionally, we lose a sheep and her lambs become pets and have to be hand reared.  Pet lambs are cute and feeding lambs with a bottle sounds like fun and it is –  but what is best for the lamb is that it is reared naturally by a sheep.  So our goal is not to have any pet lambs.  This means that if a ewe looses a lamb at birth (or shortly afterwards) we ‘mother on’ a pet lamb.  This entails fooling the ewe into thinking the pet lamb is hers.  We put the skin of her own dead lamb onto the pet lamb and generally within 24 hours she thinks its her own and accepts it.  Win Win all round.  The ewe has a lamb, the lamb has a mother and we have no bottle feeding to do!

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