Avalanche of Lambs

A fluffy white blizzard - of hundreds of newborn lambs - hits a Reading farm, keeping the shepherd's hands full.

Armfuls of fluffy newborn lambs wobble around for the cameras in this light-hearted item from the Topical Budget newsreel. These springtime frolics may have been amusing for cinema audiences, but lambing season is hard work - pity the poor shepherd who apparently was kept up nearly a whole week dealing with the little bundles of joy!

The landowner alluded to in the intertitle was Major James Archibald Morrison, a Conservative MP who inherited the estate near Basildon in 1910. He served in WWI and turned the park into a convalescent home for soldiers after returning home injured from the Battle of the Somme.