Sam has been livestock manager at Cotswold Farm Park for just under a year, but his passion for the job goes back much further than that. We caught up with him during the busiest time of his farming calendar, lambing season, to talk new life, long hours, ruined shirts, and why spring on the farm never gets old. 

Q: What does this season, Spring, mean to you personally on the farm?

A: Obviously it's a symbol of new beginnings and a fresh start, but seeing births is something I will never, ever get tired of. I still get just as excited now as I did when I was a little boy seeing animals being born. It's a really special time for me. 

Q: How does the atmosphere change from winter into lambing season?

A: Winter is dark, cold and wet, everything feels harder. There's this romantic view of snow and ice being picturesque, but snow just causes me nothing but problems! When we get to Spring, the mood just lifts, the weather's better, the grass is growing, and the cows and sheep are coming outside and going back to the fields, where they should be.  

Q: How many lambs and goat kids are born each season?

A: About 600 to 700 altogether. We've got commercial sheep, native sheep, primitive sheep, and the goats, so everything falls into different categories and we lamb one group at a time. We started in February half term with the commercial sheep, then went into the native sheep, then the primitive sheep, and we're just rounding off the goats and the primitives now at the end of March, while starting on our second block of commercial sheep. We lamb around 300 sheep, and while a lot of sheep farmers would do that over a series of weeks, we spread it out from February through to the end of April. It's a wider window but it does feel like you're lambing for a very long time. 

"Nothing makes us happier than people getting to see things being born."

Q: Is that because visitors can sometimes witness births, is that why you spread it out?

A: That's the focus of it, yes. We want people to see that. We start every half term and go all the way through to the Easter holidays. Nothing makes us happier than people getting to see things being born. Mother's Day, I've never seen so many people in that shed. We did have a few births that day which made it all worthwhile. We also did a lambing after dark event and had a birth there too, quite a dramatic one, where we had to intervene. It was very touch and go at one point, but thankfully we got two lambs out alive and mum was fine. 

Q: Can you share a memorable or unexpected lambing moment?

A: The lambing after dark event is a great example. I had my best clothes on for the farmer's Q&A, no wellies, no lambing gear. After the Q&A we all walked up to the shed together and there'd been a sheep that looked really agitated all day but hadn't got on with it. I said to everyone, "I'll just put an arm-length glove on and have a feel to see where she's up to." I put my hand inside and all I could feel was feet, two lambs trying to come out at the same time, one coming backwards, one coming forwards, legs crossed over. What should have been a quick check turned into half an hour of drama. There was a point I thought I was going to have to ring the vet. But thankfully it all paid off, we got both lambs out, mum was fine, and I ruined my shirt in the process. No matter, I'd write off a thousand shirts to get one happy lamb out

Sam at Cotswold Farm Park, talking about lambing with lots of children looking on.

Q: What does a typical day look like for you during lambing season?

A: Stressful! The most important thing is my first cup of coffee. My shift at the minute is 6 till 3, so I'm up at half five. I live on the farm, so my commute is probably the best out of everybody's. I'm up at half five, cup of coffee, down to the lambing shed to see what's gone on through the night. We have someone doing a night check until midnight, but there's a gap after that, so first thing I do is walk around, make sure everything's okay, see if anything's been born during the night, which it usually has. I'll move any newborns into individual pens, make sure the lambs have drunk colostrum from mum, and check everyone's happy and healthy. Then I go around and fill all the feed tubs up. After that there are the pet lambs to feed. By that point the rest of the livestock team start arriving, but while I've been awake for two hours and I'm buzzing, they turn up like zombies. We make a plan for the day, moving sheep out to the field, bringing more sheep up from the other farm to the lambing shed, taking the sheepdog out to check on lambs outside. Nutrition is critical for heavily pregnant sheep, so there's silage to feed them as well. Then I'll try to get into the office and catch up with a load of angry emails from people asking why I haven't replied, because I'm in the middle of lambing! 

Q: Beyond lambing, what else makes spring a great time to visit the park?

A: We've got a packed event schedule coming up for 2026. The animals are outside again, out at grass, meeting the public, getting animal snacks from visitors. The park just looks beautiful, everything greens up after a bleak winter, the trees and paddocks start to look lush again. We've also had all the fencing redone on the farm park which looks really smart. And we've got new animals coming in, a new Jersey cow, new pigs, various others coming to live with us. It really feels like the start of a big year and everyone feels that optimism. 

"Right, get your phone cameras ready, we're going to pull this kid out and it's going to be great."

Q: Any funny moments from visitors, or anything that made you laugh?

A: The other week, I think it was actually on Mother's Day, we had a goat that had already had one kid, but she'd been scanned in for two. So I put a glove on and said to everybody, "Right, get your phone cameras ready, we're going to pull this kid out and it's going to be great." I put the glove on, went in, and there was no kid. She'd only had one. Everyone just laughed because I'd given it the big build-up, playing the heroic farmer who was going to deliver the kid, and there was nothing there.  

Q: When does bottle feeding start?

A: It starts towards the end of April and runs right through until August. 

Q: What's the biggest challenge farmers face around lambing at this time of year?

A: It's the long hours and hard work. You're not just walking around, it's physically tiring, it can be lonely, and it can be really tough, especially if you've had animals having difficulty or not attaching to their babies, or if you've got a lot of lambs to bottle feed on your own. And when you're tired, everything else becomes harder. You're doing long hours, getting up through the night to check on sheep. It's absolutely key to look after yourself at this time of year, because as much as it's happy and brilliant that all these lambs are being born, doing so many hours and working so hard can be really tough on your mental health.