This is exactly why we moved our lambing from August to later in the year. Except this year, because the ram smashed his way out of his paddock and impregnated half the flock before I spotted his escapade.

So now we are in the middle of our lambing season, and alternating between gloriously sunny days and then a heavy, cold rain day.

So far this year we've had a few single births and one set of triplets. The triplets were quite small, one bigger than the others. I've been keeping my eye on them, as I was worried mum might get overwhelmed, and have trouble feeding them enough.

But she's been great. Attentive, watchful. She's slow getting round, as it's hard to travel when there's three moving parts all running loose. She's one of the sheep that is very food orientated, so its relatively easy for me to get close enough to hand feed her a few snacks during the day to keep her topped up.

It can be tricky. If the other sheep twig what's going on they rush in and start pushing and shoving, and the lambs are then at risk of being knocked and stepped on.

But Monday was exactly the weather that was predicted. Cold day, and ongoing, persistent heavy rain. I went out during the day and found the triplets. Mum was standing in the rain, but next to my big double-axle trailer. Her lambs were out of the rain, under the trailer. Great, best option.

Actually, there are better options. There's two sheep-sized shelters, and a few trees here and there, but most of my adult sheep just stand in the rain, and the lambs stand with them. The first few days they can be at risk, but after that the lambs get a bit more cluey and start to find their own solutions. For example, there's another shelter option that they worked out for themselves…they pile into the tunnel into a wombat burrow. When they come out, they are covered in dirt, but not rain-chilled.

Hard to keep track of them, and the mums wander around calling. When the lambs emerge its hilariously like a clown car, with a stream of energy bouncing out of the hole in the embankment.

But at four o'clock when I went to round them up for penning for the night, there was an ominous white lump in the paddock. As we watched we saw the triplet-mum calling, and the small bundle lifted its head and flopped back.

Working backwards I am guessing she got caught in the rain, hunkered down to try and stay warm but the continuous cold rain chilled her. As the biggest of the three triplets she might not have had enough fuel anyway, and by the time we picked her up she was hypothermic.

We split tasks. My wife went back to the house with the lamb and I rounded up the sheep. Took forever, with two recalcitrants being bloody-minded about being penned. When I got home the lamb was rugged up, on a lap, by the fire. But stone cold, and barely alive.

I thought she was done, but we syringed lambing milk into her millilitre by millilitre. Like a flywheel, that gave her enough fuel to swallow more, and eventually we got a bottle and almost 100 mls into her. She came to a few hours later and we are off and running.

We are old hands now at hand-rearing lambs. We have a dog cage with blankets parked in the loungeroom by the fire, and our day revolves around the short intervals between feeds.

We learnt the hard way to NOT follow the instructions about decreasing the number of feeds while increasing the volume of milk, and we feed small amounts at short intervals…three or four hours.

The new arrival is greeted with suspicion and hatred by our dogs, and they sit in fury on a couch. They are on a short leash at the start, but 24 hours later they are ok to be off-leash. I wouldn't leave them alone, but I don't have to wave the terrifying disciplinary cardboard tube at them to keep them at bay.

The next phase is to get her out with the other sheep so she transitions back to the paddock and flock.

Meanwhile, there's more lambs coming.