In my last dispatch we had just started lambing our year-old hoggets and now two weeks later I can confirm that our first lambing season has officially ended. In this column, I’ll go through a few of our stats and the other items we’re tracking as we try to get an efficient sheep enterprise up and running.

The first key number is prolificacy. Including losses, the hoggets averaged 1.1 lambs. I need to check, but I think this is about average for first-time lambers.

Next we recorded the amount of assistance each ewe needed. Overall, those that had single lambs needed more help than those with twins. I’m guessing this is no coincidence as the singles were bigger while the smaller twins popped out easily enough. It was the same with the amount of liveliness or vigour the lambs exhibited when they were born: the big singles were sluggish and slower to get up and drink, but the light twins were livelier and were up trying to drink sooner.

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Various notes were also taken about each birth, such as whether the lamb drank himself/herself or needed to be “encouraged”. We also recorded how quickly the ewe recovered if she had to be handled during birth, and whether there was any meconium on the lamb when they were delivered. This indicates a delayed or difficult birth.

All the above data (and more) will be used when we start to consider next season’s breeding policy. We may be dealing with small numbers at the moment, so it’s about getting the process of recording data right – and getting into good habits before we scale up (if that’s the route we go!).

We didn’t have weighing scales ready at time of birth but we’ve since weighed all lambs, including those we purchased. This will give an idea of birth weight and we can obviously measure daily weight gain from this point onwards too.

Learning at the mart

Since we’re still increasing stock numbers, we have been to New Ross mart the last few Saturdays. It’s years since we were regular mart visitors and we were somewhat innocent going in. However, a few hours spent around the ring with seasoned campaigners and we were certainly much less innocent on the way out.

We bought all hoggets, with lambs at foot, and the prices being offered by factories were reflected over the few weeks at the mart too as prices rose and dropped in tandem.

The hump of lambing has now passed and the next few weeks will give us a little bit of respite. There’s some grass finally appearing and hopefully we’ll need to start dividing fields into paddocks to manage grass as we move into summer.

The learning continues apace. So far, we’ve put in the time and gone into everything with an open mind. But luck has played a role too. I’m hoping the harder and smarter we work, the luckier we’ll get.

Kieran Sullivan and his brother farm part-time in Co Waterford. You can follow him on Twitter: @kieran_sullivan