Lambing is well advanced at this stage on Tullamore Farm, with a small number of ewes and yearling hoggets remaining.

The lambing season has been intense, with upwards of 70% of mature ewes lambing in a 10-day to two-week period.

The favourable weather underpinned a smooth transition in getting ewes and newborn lambs turned outdoors, in many cases within 24 hours.

Farm manager Shaun Diver says there could have been far more challenges were weather conditions not amenable to a quick turnaround in individual pens and lessons will be learned for 2023 to have a higher number of pens available.

The farm is recording lambing performance on the Sheep Ireland database to allow lifetime performance to be tracked back to the dam and sire.

Instant analysis

The system allows instant analysis of information submitted and records collected to date from 249 births shows 150 lambs, or 60% of births, requiring no lambing assistance.

A total of 44 lambs (17.6%) received voluntary assistance, which could be down to aspects as lambs being delivered in advance of other tasks being completed or last thing at night.

A similar number of lambs were born with an assisted delivery, while 11 lambs (4.4%) of lambs were recorded as requiring significant assistance.

In terms of lamb birth weight, the average across all lambs was 5.6kg. Singles averaged 5.9kg liveweight, twins 5.8kg and triplet lambs 5.2kg.

The birth weight of ewe lambs and ram lambs was the same at 5.6kg.

The webinar, which is the final part of our spring livestock series, also discusses the performance of yearling hoggets and mature ewes, feeding strategies, grassland management and plans to finish lambs in 2022 given the continued escalation in the cost of concentrates and fertiliser.