I eventually made up my mind and decided to house the majority of my remaining lambs early last week just before the torrential rain arrived and I am very glad I did.

The rain that fell here flooded a few of my fields and would have set the lambs back, leaving me with no other option but to have to house them anyway.

Most of them have settled in well to their new environment. There were a handful of shy eaters needing a little extra bit of attention, so they are now in a separate pen away from any bullies.

As the lambs had been receiving 0.5kg of meal per day before they were brought into the shed, the process of building up the volume of meal to ad lib went smoothly and didn’t take too long.

At present, they are consuming approximately 1kg of meal per day and this can be expected to increase up to approximately 1.4kg. This will equate to a daily cost for meal of 36 cent. As these lambs are fairly close to being factory ready, I expect the majority will be gone in three weeks’ time. This will cost me on average €7.56 per lamb for the three-week feeding period.

I plan to weigh them this week to see how their consumption is translating into daily liveweight gain. From previous research undertaken by Teagasc on ad-lib feeding, a liveweight gain of greater than 250g per day can be expected. The last of the lambs which were left unhoused were all sold earlier this week.

The rams have finished their work here for another year. They have all been removed from the mobs of ewes and have had a quick inspection. Some of them have held their condition, but a few of them haven’t fared quite as well, so now need a bit of tender loving care.

They have all had a little pedicure and were given a dose before being left off into a paddock with a nice cover of grass near the yard where they will be fed some concentrates to regain condition. This is even more important for any ram lambs bred this year because not looking after them now will affect their performance in the years to come.

The ewes have been regrouped into larger flocks and have been allocated the remaining fields to be grazed out pre-housing. With the heavy rain last week, I have moved to day blocks or cell grazing to try and get the best utilisation out of the grass that is available here on the farm.

It appears to be working very well, with ewes moved to fresh blocks daily. As ewes do not go back over ground already grazed, there is less poaching and the grass regrowth can be seen three days after removal of the sheep.

At present, I have enough grass to see most of the groups out till Christmas and possibly allow me to keep the ewe lambs out till the New Year but the weather will have a big part to play in this.