Bring on the hot water and towels

I’M SITTING IN ONE of the veterinary surgery’s treatment rooms, listening and watching as our vet pulls an interesting array of items out of a large blue plastic crate.

The blue box is the lambing kit. By the time it is empty I have a list of 22 items, all of which I need to source and take home by the end of today. There are the menders and the revivers: antibiotics, glucose, calcium, dopram and artificial colostrum - with their required syringes, needles, drenches, catheters and gastric tubes. Other bottles contain iodine and a variety of antiseptic washes and scrubs. Everything - you, the sheep, the byre and the implements - needs to be kept as clean as possible to avoid some of the nasty ills that can afflict a sheep at lambing time.

Next comes what I guess could be called the lambing aids. Although they sound pretty horrible, they are used to ease the lambing process. These are the ropes, the snares, restrainers and retainers. As Kate holds up each item, my mind flicks back to my days as a student nurse, consigned to the labour wards for four weeks. Remembering the frightening-looking forceps and other weird implements available to help deliver a child, I can’t help but think that lambs have the better deal.

The ropes, used to secure lambs’ legs and pull them out, are of a lovely soft material, a bit like an old school tie (in fact, I’m sure you could use a couple of ties). The snare, designed to be flipped over the lamb’s head and behind her ears for the final pull out, again looks soft and comfortable. The restrainer is simply a moulded piece of plastic that holds the ewe’s head and forelegs still, enabling you to concentrate on the job in hand at the other end. And the retainer? Well, OK, that one’s not quite so pleasant a prospect. I won’t go into details here, but I’m sure you can imagine.

Once you have your lamb, or lambs, you need towels to give them a good rub dry. I have a stack of old terry nappies lurking in my airing cupboard, which will do the job nicely. If they don’t immediately suck from their mum then you need to provide them with colostrum for their first 24 hours of life, and if for some reason they are orphaned then powdered milk, a whisk and teats and bottles are essential. I jot down "kettle" as another essential in the lambing byre. Hot water and towels are, it seems, ubiquitous to all maternity units.

A really cold lamb (a thermometer is pulled from Kate’s box of tricks) may need to go into a lamb warming box. This is the equivalent of popping them into the warming drawer of the Rayburn and is usually a home-made affair, involving scrap wood and a fan heater. Another warming device is a heat lamp strung low over a small pen. Everyone in Orkney seems to call these "piggie bulbs", an allusion to their use for litters of piglets in the good old days when every farm kept a sow.

Over a welcome cup of coffee, the lambing box is cleared away and another box, sloshing with warm water, hoves into view. This is the artificial ewe, complete with pelvis through which we are going to spend the rest of the day thrusting our arms. Notepads are put to one side and overalls donned as we prepare to get down and dirty.

Several hours later we have all successfully delivered lambs presented in every position, from normal to breech to completely upside down and back to front. We have talked through everything normal to abnormal, We have had a go at docking and castrating - using those tiny, tight rubber rings for both - and at giving injections. It has been a full-on, fast-paced, instructive and enlightening course, which I would recommend to anyone who ever needs to help with lambing.