When a sheep farmer is weaning 1.99 lambs per ewe mated, it grabs your attention. It certainly got the large crowd talking at this week’s BETTER farm sheep walk hosted by David McLaughlin. David runs 78 lowland ewes and 260 Blackface ewes on three land blocks totalling 131.5ha at Greencastle, Co Donegal.

Over the past three years, David has regularly hit 1.9 lambs weaned per ewe mated in his lowland flock of 78 breeding ewes. This year, David weaned 1.99 lambs/ewe, which is a phenomenal level of output. Flock management is top-class and the quality of lambs and breeding ewes is excellent.

Lambing percentage was 225% per ewe mated this year. Triplet lambs are removed shortly after birth and intensively reared indoors for finishing by June before prices start to fall.

Feeding

Approximately 110kg to 120kg of meal is fed to these lambs. No other lambs receive meal. The remaining lambs are all finished off grass. Drafting starts in June and 30% of lambs are now sold. The remainder have just been weaned and will be finished off grass by September.

Lowland ewe type consists of mules bred from David’s Blackface hill flock and a Blackface X Belcare ewe. All replacements are bred as hoggets.

Lowland ewes are crossed with Texel rams and start lambing between 17 and 20 March annually. The hill flock lambs from mid-April onwards and is bred to Blackface, Blueface Leicester, Texel and Belcare rams.

BETTER farm programme

David has been part of the BETTER farm sheep programme since 2008 and made huge strides in driving his farm forward to being more profitable. Since joining the programme, lamb numbers produced from his lowland flock have increased by 60 head, or 1,200kg of lamb carcase.

Gross output is now €2,190/ha and variable costs are €858/ha. Gross margin is €1,332/ha, placing the farm in the top 5% of sheep farms completing profit monitors.

The stocking rate for the lowland flock is 10 ewes/ha or four ewes/acre. The lowland block is 17ha of good productive grassland and the plans are to now increase the lowland flock to 90 ewes and maintain lamb output at current levels.