Breeding season is in full swing at the moment. Last Friday was the end of the first week of mating here with the mature ewes. A rough count of ewes that had been raddled (marked) showed that the rams have been very busy, with 44% tupped in the previous seven days.

All going well, this will lead to a very busy few weeks in spring as the sheep that were artificially inseminated are due a few days prior to these.

The raddle colour has been changed to the next assigned colour. I find changing the raddle colour at weekly intervals to be extremely helpful come the next spring, as the ewes can not only be penned according to their litter size, but also to their respective lambing dates.

The rams will be let off to the ewe lambs this week. There has been a big improvement in the average weight of my replacements again this year.

Since joining the BETTER Sheep Farms programme a few years ago, the average weight of my replacements has increased by nearly 10kg – from 38kg then to 47.8kg this year.

The fact that I’ve been building my flock numbers from a closed flock has meant that to retain the required numbers for replacements, sometimes I have had to keep ewe lambs that were on the lighter side.

With the ewe lambs now more even in nature, Ciaran Lynch from Teagasc is this year going to trial two other breeds (Charollais and Vendéen) along with the Ile de France on my ewe lambs.

I had experience with Charollais a few years back but I have had no experience with the Vendéen breed whatsoever and I am looking forward to seeing how they get on.

I am interested in seeing how my ewe lambs breed with the Vendéen. All three breeds are easily lambed, which is my main concern with ewe lambs. They have been divided up into three groups which are equal in every way apart from the breed of ram.

With grass still growing well, I have been finding it hard to graze out fields quickly enough, so I have started putting in subdivisions to force the ewes to graze out grass completely while not putting them under nutritional pressure as they are moved on to fresh grass every three days.

This will also help me build up grass covers to extend their time outside before going into the shed.

Some fields that were grazed in late September and early October will be grazed again shortly as they are close to the yard. Hopefully by the end of this month I will have 40% of the farm closed off for the spring grazing.