Springwatch and Autumnwatch favourite Kate Humble is hosting Lambing Live on BBC2. The show will air five nights in one week and will also include recorded footage of Kate learning to be a shepherdess on a farm near her home in south Wales.

Tell us about Lambing Live.
It’s a celebration of sheep. People will be surprised just how interesting these animals are and that they are not just boring and thick! We have made an observational documentary of the whole process from buying rams/tups and mating them with the ewes, to the lambing and then through to the meat section. The live show is the culmination and will include the recorded footage.

You’ve already delivered your first lamb, which has been named Humble in your honour. What was that like?
Amazing. Ewes tend to lamb in the middle of the night and the reason for that is that if they were truly wild, there wouldn’t be any predators around so it gives the lambs a chance to get up, be perky and scarper. I was on the 5am shift with Kate Beavan [the farmer’s wife] and a ewe was about to have twins. She had the first one and was taking a bit of a long time with the other so I helped her out. It was quite scary, I thought, ‘Don’t you need an exam for this?’ I put my hand in and I could feel the two front feet and the muzzle. I know it’s a real cliché but it’s a miracle, you think, ‘There’s a living thing here’. Before long it was out, I was rubbing it with straw and it was immediately on its feet and suckling. I thought, ‘That’s my baby’. it was a fantastic moment.

But it’s not all fluffy lambs — you follow the process right through to the abattoir.
Yes, in an odd way out of respect to farmer Jim Beavan I felt that I should really understand every part of the process. He and his wife have taught me everything and opened up their lives to us. They are not people who want to be on telly but they do care passionately about farming.

You aren’t filming the process but you will witness it. How do you feel about that?
Very mixed. People tend to think of me as an animal lover and I am, but in my world it means that the welfare has got to be good, it’s not about being impractical. Actually I can be very impractical, I’ve got a lot of animals at home and my husband says, ‘Well you’re never going to eat the donkeys are you?’ Clearly not and they’re not good for anything either! But our countryside wouldn’t be our countryside if we didn’t have animals that are there for meat. You wouldn’t have them if they weren’t. The thing that does make me nervous is the transition from live sheep to dead sheep, will I cope with it? I don’t know is the honest truth, but I think I should do it.

What do you hope the programme will achieve?
For me this isn’t about shocking viewers, it’s about educating — and that’s something I feel passionate about and one of the things that makes me proudest about the sort of programmes I do. Springwatch, Autumnwatch, and most recently Frankincense, to tell people about things they weren’t aware of through me. We want people to go away from this having learnt something about what our farmers do and appreciating the meat on their table.

By Mary Comerford