Riggwelter

A normal Friday morning walk from Cullingworth. It looked like rain but stayed dry and warm with us four ladies peeling off layers as we went! I took Cow Parsley, wild garlic flowers and lots of bluebells still in the woods on our approx.1 hour walk. All good for Flower Friday - I haven't even looked at them.

I drove my neighbour Debbie, and met the other two ladies by the church shown in my Monday blip, so drove him again at the end of the walk. That's when things started not being normal.
Driving the mile and a half home we pass fields on either side of the road. I spotted a sheep on it's back with its legs waving in the air (riggwelter). I know that it is often impossible for them to get back onto their feet and they can die so we just had to turn around and see what we could do.

Firstly the only way to get in was by climbing the fence! Not good for me with short legs. The sheep looked impossibly big as we approached but as Debbie started to try and roll it I noticed something else. It was giving birth! The lamb was breech and therefore possible dead but we couldn't just leave it and it didn't seem to want to budge.

I ran down to some farm buildings across the road (climbing another get after climbing back over the first!) Nothing but cows that became very excited by my presence. The problem is most of the old farms are now converted to fancy houses and you've no idea who owns the stock. I went to the hamlet above the fields where I was pretty sure no,wowkring farms still existed but asked an old gentleman if he knipw who owned the stock. Yes was the answer but he lived in Eldwick, four miles away and he didn't know his name or number.

Looking down to where Debbie and the poor sheep was I saw a Timothy Taylor dray had stopped and two men were heading across the fields. By the time I got back down one of them (the son of a farmer from another village about 3 miles away)'had delivered the dead breech lamb and was on with getting the next one out. A bit of a struggle as it's leg was stuck. Eventually it was out and he was swinging it around by its back legs to get it breathing! Soon mum was licking it and it was congratulations all round. A few minutes after they left he cam back saying he had been to a neighbouring property and got the owner to ring the farmer. Nothing to do now but wait and enjoy taking pictures of the lamb standing up and moving around.  I noticed the sheep was straining but Debbie said it would be delivering the afterbirth.

I took a look, there was another head! We were back on our own. As I rushed of again (thinking more gates to climb) Debbie tried to deliver it. Before I got to the gate I could hear her shouting and looked back to see her swinging it around in the air as the man had done. She was so worried it wasn't breathing but I assured her it was. So that was our morning!

I've used Debbie's name as she was heroic. The two guys were Miles Cray and Phil Grey and I sent a picture of them to the brewery to thank them (extra) and assured them that we would be drinking Timothy Taylor's from now on!

The farmer wasn't that phased whe he arrived. Said it was a rare happening and he'd only had three out of 500 had three lambs which was probably the cause of her being on her back.

We felt it was an emotional, stressful and pretty amazing morning. Think our fellow walkers will be a bit surprised! Not the usual end to a morning walk.

(Hope the gore doesn't upset anyone, it's definitely not a cutesie blip!)

Think you might have had enough today so will add my Highland Flickr link later.