Coleg Gwent’s Usk Campus -home to its animal and landbased courses – has welcomed a bumper crop of lambs this Spring.
The college had 110 ewes that lambed this season producing a mixture of triplets, twins and single born lambs which totalled 160 lambs.
The lambing season began in early March, and most of the lambs were born in the first three weeks, giving Level 1 Diploma in Landbased Studies (Animal Care) students hands-on experience of a working farm during lambing season
The flock of sheep consists of a mixture of breeds which include Suffolk, Mule, Cheviot and Texel.
It was a very exciting time on the campus as Landbased Lecturer Nicola Tranter explains; “We lamb all the sheep indoors, and students get the opportunity to carry out a variety of tasks,” she said.
“Students help to set up the design and layout of the shed for lambing. Then once the sheep come inside, they feed the sheep hay, Maize and Barley, bed them down with straw to keep them dry and warm.”
“A few students also experience assisting with difficult births, although most sheep give birth in the late afternoon and night,” said Nicola.
Coleg Gwent students also handle the lambs after they are born, penning the newborn lambs with their mothers into individual pens, helping newborn lambs suckle for the first time, putting rubber rings on the lambs tails, spraying numbers on the sheep and lambs, and bottle feeding the pet lambs.
