The reason we time our lambs for August is to avoid the hot weather and the flies that come with it. By the time the lambs are eating solids the grass has started, and they grow as the grass grows.

The downside is the cold and rain that comes in August. While the sheep are pretty tough and can slog out a heavy rainstorm, it can be devastating for newborn lambs.

A couple of days ago I found a newborn lamb huddled and cold. The first of twins, he'd been drenched by sleeting cold rain as his sibling was born. He'd gone into a downward spiral….too cold to stand properly, he'd not got enough fuel to build any heat. He wasn't asleep, but he was hypothermic and unresponsive. His mum was nearby, caught between her twin responsibilities, with the second lamb standing by, also now getting wet and cold.

The rain belted down.

Intervention is a last resort, as it often results in the mother rejecting the lamb, but this was only going to end one way without help.

I unzipped my jacket and tucked the lamb inside. He was stone cold, sopping wet. While the mother stood nearby, warning me off by stamping her foot and tossing her head, I knelt down and warmed him up. The rain didn't stop, but he was ok inside my jacket, and after ten minutes he came around, and started wriggling. I propped him on his feet and steered him to his mum.

But it didn't work. He was not feeding properly, missing the nipple, searching the front leg by mistake and so on, and rapidly chilled again as the rain continued to bite. He collapsed, once, twice then couldn't get up.

Which is how he finished up in the house. He spends the night in a locked room, inside a 2 x 1 metre cage. In the morning he's taken out into a secure outside pen. When we have teenage chicks they spend a month in that pen, but its free at the moment. It has shelter, water, and plenty of grass to nibble.

I did try and take him back to his mother the next day when the rain stopped, but he'd already been fed formula milk and his smell had changed. She sniffed him once, twice…then walked away quickly.

I did also try and foist him onto another sheep whose lamb had died. I rubbed our boy with fluid from the corpse of the dead lamb and tried to convince the grieving mother her lamb had returned. Didn't work. In theory I could have skinned the dead lamb and wrapped the skin on the rejected lamb, but I didn't have the stomach for that approach.

We started the socialization with the rest of the flock today, which is simply walking him out amongst the other sheep. In a few more days we'll put him out with them and call him in for a feed., and from that point he should be fine.

Last year's poddy lamb, now fully grown, has remembered how this works and comes running when she sees us with a bottle.

So, so far we've had seven sets of twins, and two singles. Of the singles, both died. One died of exposure. It looked like it had been born alive, but never moved from the spot it landed. It was still lying amongst the birthing fluids, amniotic sac etc. I suspect the mother let it die without attending to it. Her lamb died under very similar circumstances last year, I've seen no sign of her grieving or looking for her lamb, and she doesn't appear to have any milk. We'll get rid of her.

The other lamb died in birth. It was gigantic, too big to progress by itself. I had to catch the mother and physically pull the now-dead lamb out. It's a shame, it was a champion, a victim of the good season and good nutrition we've had the last 12 months.