Alan Cole’s farm in Moatfield, Athy, Co Kildare, was the venue for last Friday’s Teagasc Grass10 sheep farm walk. The Grass10 campaign is a four-year initiative launched earlier this year, which targets increasing the volume of grass grown to 10t DM/ha and lifting the number of grazings to 10 per paddock.

The Cole farm has been in a transition phase in recent years, following a reduction in the area of land devoted to tillage. The split stands at 25.4ha of grass and 14ha of tillage. The sheep flock has 220 ewes and 93 ewe lambs put to the ram in autumn 2016. This gives a stocking rate of about 12 ewes/ha or currently there is about 11.5 ewes/ha rearing lambs when dry ewe hoggets and barren ewes are removed from the calculation.

Alan believes there is scope to continue to increase the sheep flock and has a target in mind of 400 ewes. This number would put the farm at a stocking rate of over 15 ewes per hectare but Alan points out that his plan is to also make the maximum use of tillage ground and combine it to good effect with the sheep flock by sowing catch crops of stubble turnips and kale. This will help cope with a high stocking rate and grass demand late in the year and deliver a rest period for swards, while also benefitting the tillage enterprise through improved soil organic matter and better use of nutrients. “Some people have said to me that the farm is already well stocked and I have lots of grass this year due to the good year. I’ll build numbers gradually and see what the farm can do but in my mind I think there is potential to get close to 400 ewes/ewe lambs.”

Improving grass utilisation

Grassland productivity has been transformed by utilising a paddock grazing system. Alan says: “I put in the first paddocks in 2013 in a 20ac field (8ha) as a trial. The area was split into six divisions with three strands of electric fencing and the benefits were so good that I never looked back. Since then, I have progressed fencing all the boundaries of the farm with permanent fencing through TAMS but everything else has been cheap and cheerful.”

Alan says that as well as paddocks making it easier to manage grass, they have also breathed new life into older swards. “Since I put in paddocks, old pastures have turned inside out. Fertiliser is more targeted and the focus on regular applications has worked out better than I could have imagined. A lot of people are talking about reseeding and I can see the value in reseeding from the tillage ground that has gone back into grass. But reseeding is a huge cost and if I was spending money I would first put it into paddocks and fencing and improving what is already there. The change is like having new fields or farming double the area than I have,” says Alan.

The fact that Alan now has 20 paddocks in place measuring 1.3ha on average and is carrying out grass measuring and budgeting is greatly helping in reacting to the strong grass growth of recent weeks.

A number of paddocks have been skipped and these will be baled as high-quality silage or hay. This is helping to maintain quality and will reap the rewards for lambs post-weaning.

Even with this in place, there is still a challenge in managing grass and a couple of paddocks may have to be grazed that have gone stronger than desired. The route taken here though will be to avoid forcing ewes and lambs to graze out paddocks with ewes used to graze out paddocks after weaning or topping used to remove lower-quality material.

At present, there are two grazing groups, a flock of about 200 ewes and their lambs and yearling hoggets are rearing lambs. Lambing started on 4 March with yearling hoggets lambing in a tight three-week period. From 1 April, the weaning date is likely to be delayed for a week, so that a higher number of lambs can possibly be drafted before weaning. The normal drafting weight at this stage of the year is 40kg to 42kg depending on lamb type.

Post-weaning, lambs will be grazed on a clover reseed and after-grass swards. Management of the yearling flock has been tweaked. Initially, ewe lambs were run with mature ewes. Two years ago, weaning was delayed but this resulted in hoggets failing to regain condition before breeding, which negatively affected performance and litter size. Last year, lambs were weaned early and Alan says that the younger age of lambs resulted in lambs going backwards following weaning and not finishing until early 2017. This year, the group are being run on their own with lambs offered creep. Volumes consumed are small to date at about 150g to 200g and Alan says that lactating hoggets and lambs are performing much better.

Breeding programme

Breeding on the farm is changing. Lleyn rams have been run with Suffolk x Cheviot and Suffolk cross ewes, which formed the foundation of the flock. Alan felt that the Lleyn ewes were losing shape and for the last two years has been running a Texel ram on a percentage of Lleyn-cross ewes to improve conformation. While this has worked, he feels it is complicating breeding with Charollais rams used to improve progeny conformation.

“The Lleyn ewe for me is the perfect maternal ewe, but you are also left with a male Lleyn lamb, which is harder to finish and doesn’t grade as well as the Charollais-cross lambs. Last year, I put the Lleyn rams with the top third of ewes which I felt were most suitable for breeding replacements for three weeks. After this, the rams were removed and these ewes joined with the remainder of the flock and Charollais rams. This seems to be the best mix and is probably the route I will progress with.”

Ewes scanned 1.87 lambs per ewe to the ram in 2017, with just 2% barren, while yearlings scanned 0.9 lambs after three weeks of breeding and a pregnancy rate of 80% of 93 joined.

Teagasc business and technology adviser Christy Watson (below) works closely with Alan and says there is huge scope for others to follow in his footsteps. “More paddocks deliver on a number of fronts. There is a 15% boost in grass output from rotational grazing. The scope of greater flexibility and control during peak growth periods will have massive benefits for animal performance, while having ewes in better condition will increase the litter size and lead to fewer problems. This doesn’t take into account the potential for mixed grazing which offers even more benefits. I have seen farmers who have been able to drop rented land and still maintain and even lift output. My advice is to try paddocks on a small area and then take it from there.”

Browse the picture gallery at the top of this page for more pictures, boards and captions.