For those of us in desperate need of rain, late August heralded the beginning of more normal Irish weather, and thankfully grass has started to respond accordingly. And while the east coast of Co Down was far too dry for maintaining decent growth rates, it looked positively green compared with large areas across the Irish Sea.

This year’s holiday was divided between a few nights in Chester, followed by the rest of the week in North Wales (Snowdonia). If I thought I was in a bit of a pickle when we left home, it was nothing by comparison. For the second year in a row, England has been hit with proper drought conditions, and I could only pity the farmers over there when driving past, with nothing but burnt pasture as far as the eye could see.

Even in the mountains in Wales, there were no green fields to be seen until you cast your eye halfway up the hills. If we assume that fodder stocks were well depleted last year, then dear only knows what price their hay and silage is going to be as we approach the winter.

Not ideal

Despite being relatively well off for grass compared with our English and Welsh neighbours, my own situation has been far from ideal.

While cattle appear to have thrived well during the sunny weather, the big losers were my lambs. A number of factors combined to make it another of those years when something occurs to limit lamb performance.

Firstly, there were more cattle on hand than most other years, although this was catered for at the end of the winter – not so much by taking on more acres, but by keeping my fingers crossed for one of those summers when grass never stops growing.

That didn’t turn out so well, since a bit of blind hope isn’t necessarily a bombproof strategy at any time.

So, the knock-on effect was that several batches of sheep and lambs possibly lacked an extra shift or two onto a wee fresh bite – a ‘fresh bite’ isn’t altogether a recognised scientific term and is impossible to quantify accurately, but in my opinion is vital for young lambs still on the mother.

Obviously, I convinced myself that I was merely practising really fantastic grassland management by making them clean out swards, but deep down I knew rightly.

Feet

On top of slightly suppressed liveweight gains, an outbreak of CODD which spread from ewes to lambs, caused real problems also.

My initial response was to treat lambs for scald and early footrot, and this proved disastrous since Alamycin is a waste of time for this horrible foot condition.

I think I am finally on top of the issue, but I have been so scarred by the condition that I find myself obsessively watching pens of breeders for lameness before daring to bid for them.

I recently selected 40 homebred ewe lambs for keeping, and rejected anything that showed signs of lameness, despite some weighing close to 50kg.

The lamb thrive (or lack of it) then became slightly exaggerated by a shortage of after grass following silage cutting.

Most years, lambs are weaned onto lush swards of leafy material, and the wet, dirty tails are testimony to the grass quality. About the only positive from this year’s dry weather was probably the lack of dirty backends.

Grass certainly grew after silage making, but there was never quite enough and three-weekly weighings were a depressing affair.

Meal fed

The upshot of all this has translated into all lambs now being fed (barely half are away) and not just those special needs ones such as triplets, pets, and ewe lamb doubles.

I am also feeding 25 cull ewes to fatten them up a bit, so between extra lambs guzzling merrily on 400g of lamb blend as well as these old ewes, my meal fed per head for this year’s benchmarking is going to be astronomical. I suspect it is going to finish up more than double what I am aiming for.

It seems as if a different problem crops up each year to slow up lamb thrive. I used to say to myself, “next year I’ll sort out all that nonsense”, but sheep problems are like the online scammers – they just manage to stay one step ahead all the time, don’t they?