Lambing in the Irish and New Zealand Across Country Comparison study has progressed well despite facing plenty of challenges. Peak lambing in the flock coincided with Storm Emma’s heavy snowfall and sub-zero temperatures.

Henry Walsh, Teagasc technician with the flock, said the greatest test was getting ewes lambing on slats moved quickly to straw bedded pens before the body temperature of lambs dropped. “Temperatures in the shed were -7°C during the cold snap so it was a case of trying to get ewes and freshly born lambs moved off slats quickly and into warmer conditions. We had 24-hour supervision in place which was critical and thankfully we lost no animals as a result of the conditions. Everyone put their back to the wheel and put the welfare of animals first and it paid off with no losses.”

Ewes with stronger lambs were housed during the cold snap in a roofed handling unit with the different sections bedded down with straw. Trailers were placed alongside the open side of the handling unit and this broke the worst of the east wind and snow. Henry says the fact that the handling unit was in sections also allowed ewes and lambs to remain in their groups and be turned out quickly once weather improved.

86% conception

With 86% conception to AI, most ewes lambed in the first lambing cycle with only about 25 repeats lambing in the last week. Nicola Fetherstone, PhD student with the flock, said the New Zealand ewes continue to outperform their Irish counterparts in terms of lambing ease, mothering ability and vigour of lambs at birth. The high genetic merit Irish Suffolk and Texel ewes also appear to be outperforming the low genetic merit ewes.

Fiona McGovern, researcher with the trial, explains that data collected on all aspects of lambing performance will be collated in the coming weeks and allow differences recorded to be accurately quantified. She says that provisional estimates show lambing mortality running at 8% to 9% with the New Zealand ewes appearing to have delivered the highest number of live lambs followed by the elite Irish ewes.

Fiona says that across all three groups lamb birth weights are on target with singles, twins and triplets averaging 6.12kg, 5.23kg and 4.45kg, respectively.

For now, the focus is very much on dealing with poor spring grass growth and balancing supply and demand. The first paddocks being grazed by ewes and lambs, which were closed in mid-October 2017, had heights of 5cm to 7cm at turnout however the average farm cover is still below target at 300kg DM/ha.

Currently, ewes require an average of 2.4kg DM/day to meet requirements and this will increase as she approaches peak milk yield. As a result, meal was introduced at 0.7kg to stretch grass supplies and this was increased in the last week to 1kg concentrates due to lower than average grass growth rates.

Henry says that ewes and lambs were much more content on Thursday and Friday with reseeded swards starting to show some signs of achieving grass growth. He said that the level of supplementation offered will continue to be monitored with the allocation possibly reducing to 0.5kg and then being stopped completely once grass growth rates return to normal.

Ewes and lambs are currently split into smaller batches and will be grouped into their 60-ewe grazing groups as soon as is practical to facilitate rotational grazing and allow grass to recover.

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