Bleat all about it! Lambing long weekends in UK are the new city break

The Guardian

02-03-2025

In a shed in the Malvern Hills, lambs struggle clumsily to their feet as holidaymaking couples look on.
Clare John, the third generation in her family to farm these 50 acres of Worcestershire pasture, began offering lambing-themed breaks two years ago in response to a surge of customer requests. Rowley Farm's holiday cottages are block-booked for the 2025 spring lambing season, which traditionally peaks around Easter.
'For farmers like me it's a bit strange to treat sheep like pets,' John said. Self-catering guests arrive at Rowley Farm from February to May to feed hay to her pregnant ewes, and to bottle-feed orphan lambs who have been abandoned by their mothers or are the thirds in triplets (which ewes can struggle to feed).
'Mostly the guests want to touch and cuddle the lambs rather than do the mucking out,' she said.
Lambs are an unlikely holiday attraction that is becoming increasingly popular. Farm Stay UK, a co-operative for farmers in hospitality, said that 90 of its 400 members now offer 'lamb watch' holidays. A number of farms are expanding their lambing offerings for 2025 to include yoga sessions in lambing sheds and adults-only night-time lamb watches. Church Farm in Lancing, West Sussex, offers evenings with the 'shepherdess team' where visitors can feed lambs and watch out for live births.
Some put this popularity down to the effect of TV shows such as Clarkson's Farm and BBC Two's Lambing Live, which is back for its fourth series in April; others to social media and literary sensation the Yorkshire Shepherdess (Swaledale farmer Amanda Owen); or the growth of live-stream lambing cams such as lambwatch.co.uk and Walby Farm Park's Lamb Cam Live.
Farmer Helen Hearn introduced lambing-shed slots for visitors in 2023 after demand began to outstrip capacity at 450-acre Penhein Farm in Monmouthshire. Guests accompany Hearn – checking the sheds for births, ensuring lambs in the field are paired up with their mothers and bottle feeding the lambs – at a charge of £45 for up to eight people a shed. 'We charge for lambing as it takes four times as long to do our farming rounds when the public is involved,' she said, 'even if they are willing to muck in.'
Hearn allows some of the families who stay over in her farm glamping pods to manage a sheep shed themselves for the duration of their stay, feeding the lambs and ewes and watching for new births and ewes in distress. She thinks lambing breaks answer a human need for connection to nature. 'In previous generations most British people would have an aunt or cousin who worked on a farm and would be around farm animals that way,' she said. 'That's all gone now.'
Hearn said she wouldn't install a lamb cam for the public to witness live births, however. 'Often I'll get a delivery that's tricky: there's ring womb [when the cervix doesn't fully dilate], say, and the vet needs to come for a caesarean or the lamb comes out dead,' she said.
Sign up to Observed
Analysis and opinion on the week's news and culture brought to you by the best Observer writers
after newsletter promotion
TikToker and amateur lambing enthusiast Melissa Arnold, AKA @melissa­lovessheep, refers to herself as 'a crazy sheep lady'. The graphic designer has volunteered for lambing season at her local farm, Readstock in Bagber, Dorset, since 2022. With no prior farming experience, Arnold has now delivered and raised more than 90 lambs, including bottle-fed orphans Jimmy Chew and Wonky, who Arnold christened and who both still live on the farm.
'I discovered lambing when I was going through a tricky period in my life and it's total escapism for me,' she said. However, she points out the hobby isn't all gambolling newborns. 'It's an everyday soap opera in the lambing shed. Lambs and ewes die regularly, and you have to learn to handle that.'
In Hampshire, farmers Fran and John Drake have had to take on additional staff, including veterinary students, to cope with surging demand for lambing stays at Michelmersh Manor Farm, a family-run mixed arable, dairy and sheep farm where 140 lambs are expected this April. 'We have one London family coming back for their fourth lambing season,' Fran Drake said. In the farmers' view, the lambing craze is down to Britons' thirst for optimism at the end of the long winter months. 'We've always had it a bit, haven't we?' Fran said. 'Spring flowers in bloom, new life, and all that?'
At a busy time of the year for farmers, offering lambing stays undoubtedly adds an administrative burden. Pregnant women, for example, are not advised to handle lambs and sheep due to the risks of infections such as toxoplasmosis and listerialisteriosis. 'You have to pay for insurance and do the health and safety assessments and make sure guests know the risks,' Hearn said. 'So it's not for bigger sheep farmers, who have upwards of 400 ewes and 700 lambs a season and don't have time to look after tourists.'
Michael Gibbs, who has farmed at Mill Farm in Middle Tysoe, Warwickshire, for 50 years, welcomes local schoolchildren into his lambing sheds but is unconvinced about turning it into a spectator sport. Farming is a business, after all. 'The French have a taste for British lamb at the moment and prices are up 30% on 2022,' the 73-year-old said, passing a trailer of hoggets (sheep between one and two years old) off to market. 'That's what the job is at the end of the day. It's not all cuddles.'