HAVE you ever seen a lamb being born, Hextol? asked the boiler-suited septuagenarian as I peered over the wall into the lambing shed.

And while I have lived in the countryside for all my adult life, and seen tens of thousands of lambs gambolling in the fields, I had to admit that I had never actually seen one entering the world for the first time.

I have to say that I prefer my lamb with new potatoes and garden peas, but it proved quite an experience,

I have always tended to avoid the birthing process, even when my four sons were being born.

While the modern day trend for dads to be in at the birth, rather than strictly the conception, was in its infancy when my lads arrived.

I always beat a hasty retreat from the delivery room when things threatened to get messy.

It was not for reasons of squeamishness, or a fear that I might faint; it was just that when you are as clumsy as me, there was a high chance I would fall over some vital piece of equipment, pull out an important tube or lead or simply get in the way.

Having done the hand holding and brow mopping for several hours, Mrs Hextol and I agreed that the process would be much less complicated if I waited outside until junior put in an appearance.

It was an arrangement that worked well, but when I was offered the chance to see a lamb making its debut in a straw-filled shed, I decided that this was something I could do without much fear of getting something wrong.

I was invited by Vera and her octogenarian husband Willie to take a grandstand seat as the yowe lying between them was in the advanced stages of labour.

Indeed, one lamb was already taking its first hesitant stumbles through the straw, and Auld Willie was busying himself at the business end of the mother to be.

“Nivvor mind watching – ye can gie me a haun,” he said with a twinkle, and I found myself kneeling in the straw beside him as he gave his own Call the Midwife masterclass.

Soon there were two tiny feet protruding from the rear end of the yowe, and Auld WIllie instructed: “Jist get a haud and pu!”

I did as I was bid, glad of the PVC gloves I was wearing.

At first nothing happened, but then there was a slippery rush and out slid the second lamb, which I gently lowered to the straw as though it was a Faberge egg.

A brisk rub with a handful of straw, and it was soon tottering round like a Saturday night drunk, its plaintive bleats mingling with a hundred others as lambing time started to get into full swing.

The new mum continued to lie on the straw and I asked naively: “Could there be another one on the way?”

Auld WIllie replied: “Whit, when she’s had two the size of these two? She’s no ‘an elephant!”

Feeling ridiculously pleased with myself, I added ovine midwife to my ever expanding CV, and spent the rest of the week inquiring as to the welfare of “my” lamb.

It’s the first time I have been at the sharp end of lambing time, and I have to say it’s an experience.

Much is made of the mystical bond between yowes and their young, even when they are just a few minutes old, and for most of the time, it’s true.

I saw one old girl launch an unprovoked attack on an elderly dog which came within 20 yards of her lambs with a headbutt a Glasgow skinhead would have been proud of, meaning I had to scoop the confused canine up and take it to a place of safety.

But at the other end of the scale, I saw another new mum abandon her twins without a second thought once released from the lambing shed.

The lambs tottered right and she darted left, defying all attempts to reunite her with her wailing offspring.

Their plaintive cries fell on deaf ears as she chewed the grass with supreme indifference.

Sheep are not known for their burning intellect, and one matron is proving a little confused as to what she should be doing.

She was brought up as a bottle- fed pet lamb, and when the bottles appear to feed the inevitable new crop of orphans, she shoulders them out of the way in a bid to grab the teat herself!