Quality Ryeland Sheep

You can buy a wireless camera for less than £40 on Ebay (from a UK seller - no waiting for delivery from Hong Kong). It will transmit a video picture for a distance of 100m without wires to a TV set in your house. This is a superb aid during lambing, enabling you to watch the sheep in your lambing shed at all hours of the day and night. It works in the dark as it has a built in infra-red lamp.

It also has a built in microphone so you can listen to your sheep - often a ewe going into labour will signal this with bleating before any other behaviour change.

Is this only for lazy shepherds that want to stay in bed?

No! Regardless of the frequency of your inspection visits to the shed, it will enable you to watch the sheep at all times. The fascinating thing is you learn to decipher the behaviour of the pregnant ewes who will give you signs of impending labour while you watch them undisturbed. These early signs are clear on the camera, which can often be disguised by the disturbance from visiting the shed at night and turning lights on. It's no replacement for inspecting them in person, but we're convinced that we see subtle changes in behaviour on the camera that aren't so easy to spot on a visit to the shed. Way in advance of the pacing around and pawing the ground, you learn to spot the general restlesness several hours before the clear labour signs.

Imagine the scenario: you make your visit to the shed in the middle of the night for a ewe that is definitely due - you return to the house, but you check the TV before getting into bed and you see a ewe behaving slighly differently. Even if you visit your sheep every two or three hours, that interval is enough for them to surprise you by producing a lamb before your next visit. All experienced shepherds have been caught out like that, and the camera reduces the chance of that happening.

The camera needs a clear 'line of sight' and will work up to 100m away from the receiver that plugs into the back of your TV. We attach ours to the window near the TV with Blutack.

  There are dozens of similar cameras available,
  but the one we have looks like this: