Lambing is one of the highest-welfare-risk periods in sheep farming, with hypothermia, mismothering, and difficult births causing significant lamb and ewe welfare impacts.
Lambs dying from hypothermia experience progressive loss of consciousness from cold over hours in their final hours of life. Lambs rejected by their mothers suffer acute distress and hunger before starvation. Ewes experiencing prolonged difficult labour without intervention suffer pain and exhaustion with high mortality risk. Poorly supervised outdoor lambing in bad weather causes preventable deaths from exposure. Skilled lambing management including colostrum supplementation, fostering techniques, and hypothermia recognition training dramatically reduces welfare incidents.