I ran the ewes and lambs through the footbath as they moved onto a new field and, as they came through, I weighed some of the lambs. Going on the markings, these lambs were born in the second week of March. They ranged in weight from 18 to 25kgs.

I was pleasantly surprised as they received no creep and the ewes received no concentrates after they lambed. My plan is similar to last year with the sheep. I will close only a small proportion of land for first cut silage and I will give the ewes the best grass possible, with the intention of having as many lambs killed as possible by the end of June.

Ewes will then be highly stocked and a large amount of ground will be closed for a cut of silage in July. This could be 40-50% of the farm. I found this worked exceptionally well last year and very few lambs were not killed by September.

I mentioned in a previous article (read it here) that I was very disappointed with a field I reseeded last September. However, in the last two weeks it has taken off. There were a lot of weeds present but I felt if the cover of grass got any heavier I wouldn’t be able to force the cattle to graze it out properly. So I decided to graze it first before spraying for the weeds. So this week I got it grazed. It was an ideal week as it was dry and animals were contented. I managed an excellent residual and it looks a great deal improved and only some bare patches are present.

It is a far cry from what it looked like in February. I applied three bags per acre of 10-10-20 to give it a boost. In approximately a week I hope to spray it with Pastor for all the different weeds present and this should leave a clean and productive sward.

I have grass seed ordered for a four acre field we hope to reseed in the next couple weeks. I have chosen a mix of AberGain, Aberchoice and Tyrella. They should give me a mix of good total yield, good spring growth and excellent ground cover. I don’t intend incorporating clover at this stage as it will be used for mostly silage cutting. We intend to direct drill again as it is low cost and there is very little work involved.