THIS little fella is certainly full of the joys of spring. Press photographer Anthony Chappel-Ross snapped our remarkable main photograph of lambs in a field near Kexby last week, when the weather was at its best.

He waited two hours to capture the image. “I do it every year. I go and sit in a field for a couple of hours and hope a lamb jumps in the air. It’s a question of being patient. There were about 100 lambs in the field. My eyes were all over the place. Occasionally one will start running, and you think ‘there’s a chance’.”

It has been a pretty good lambing year for Yorkshire farmers, says NFU spokesperson Rachael Gillbanks. The main problem has been the lack of grass. “It has been very slow to come through because of the winter that we’ve had.” Pregnant ewes get just as hungry, grass or no grass, Rachael says.

But it has been an easier lambing year than last year, when it was cold and wet. “Cold weather is fine. It is when the lambs get wet as well that the cold penetrates.”

But while they might look cuddly, lambs – and sheep generally – are resilient creatures. They don’t like being kept indoors, Rachael says. “They thrive outside.”

Lambing season is over for most farmers now, although there are still a few up in the hills with some ewes still to lamb. “I spoke to one farmer on higher ground near Skipton this week who has still got 120 ewes to lamb,” says Rachael.