It’s time to kick off the winter blues and celebrate the start of spring with the welcome return of #lambcam and this will definitely brighten up any dull day! You can follow all the action live from the lambing shed at St Fagans National Museum of History.
Lambing at Llwyn yr Eos farm will be open to the public every day during normal Museum opening hours. The Museum remains FREE TO ENTER. However, to keep you and their staff safe, they have had to reduce the number of people they can welcome on site at any one time.
LAMBCAM itself is brought to you by a small but dedicated team. Once things get going, there are experienced staff on hand during the day and through the night. As well as the area you can see on camera, there are separate nursery sheds for the ewes and their lambs.
The team will always assess the needs of the whole flock and prioritise the most vulnerable. A very sick newborn lamb that needs tube feeding may be taking precedence over a ewe in labour. Remember that there may be a staff member just out of shot watching on.
Llwyn-yr-eos is a pretty special place too. It was a tenanted farm on the Plymouth estate from at least the 18th century. The present farmhouse dates from the 19th century, but is displayed as a substantial farm of the 1930s, with gas lighting in the house and comfortable early 20th-century furniture.
In the farmyard is a barn of about 1820, much altered in the 1890s, with an oil engine and machinery for preparing animal feed. Other outbuildings include a brewhouse, pigsties, goose shed, calf pens and a stable.
The lean-to shed displays early tractors, along with the horse-drawn equipment still in use in the pre-war period. Next to the stable is a small cottage, where the farm labourer and his family lived. The farmstead was purchased from the Plymouth Estate in June 1981.
You can find out more about the farm HERE.
If you’re planning a trip to the farm to meet the mums and babies, please read the following advisory notes to help you get the most from your visit.
- Contact with sheep during lambing time can pose a health risk to pregnant women. If you are pregnant, or suspect you might be, please read the following NHS guidelines before coming to meet the sheep.
- All of the sheep in the sheds at this time of year are either heavily pregnant or very protective new mums. They operate a ‘no touch’ policy for the ewes and lambs to protect their welfare. Please be quiet and gentle around the animals.
- All healthy lambs will be happily fed by their mothers. Any additional bottle feeding needed for vulnerable lambs will be carried out as required by the farm team and will not be offered as a public activity.
- Dogs at lambing time: They can only allow well behaved dogs on short leads in the farmyard at this time of year. Please keep your dog at a respectful distance from the sheep at all times. They reserve the right to protect the welfare of the sheep in this regard and dogs/dog owners behaving inappropriately will be asked to leave the area.
LAMBCAM runs from the 1st to 22nd March between 8am and 8pm. You can follow the progress of the mums and babies on the Museum website HERE – although it’s not fully updated, as yet.
Or if you fancy a more hands on experience why not check out the Lambing Day Courses. They are held on the 4th, 8th, 11th & 13th March between 8.30am-4pm. They are however already fully booked.
As for visiting St Fagans, to manage numbers, all visitors entering the site will need to have booked a free ticket in advance, and you can do that HERE.
