Last weekend, I ventured up to Dublin with the family, not to see the All-Ireland hurling final, but to visit the store that gives most of us men cold sweats at the mention of it – that being Ikea. I was a bit concerned when Alison suggested bringing the trailer.

In fairness, she had most of her prospective purchases researched in advance.

We proceeded to collect our boxes from the different aisles and went through the checkout swiftly but then came the fun part of loading up to go home with what will now be my winter project of furniture assembly.

With the end of August drawing closer each day, it will be no length before the children head back to school and some semblance of a routine is restored here on the farm.

It also signals that the approaching breeding season is getting ever closer. I plan on shearing the ewes this week.

As I’ve mentioned before, I find shearing at this time of year gives me more flexibility later, as ewes are not as bulky with wool when housed, yet they have enough of a wool cover to be able to outwinter some of them on the Redstart. I find it also helps with keeping an eye on the ewe body condition scores over the next few months.

Flushing

Building condition on ewes doesn’t happen overnight and even flushing them for a week or two on good grass just before mating, as was traditionally practised here, isn’t enough if ewes need to put on some condition. It takes time and I have never seen a productive ewe to be over-conditioned. I will be going through the mature ewes here to assess how their body condition scores are progressing.

Any of the ewes that are falling outside the ideal condition will be separated out for some preferential treatment. Any that don’t improve in condition before mating commences will be culled out of the system. The batch of lame ewes that I pulled out after weaning are improving steadily with only a small number not. These will be culled from the system as keeping them now is only making extra work for me.

Thrive

It has been a difficult year for lamb thrive between the wet spring and the drought that is still affecting us. The ram lambs are grazing Redstart and appear to be doing well. I plan to get a good draft of them in the next week or so.

The ewe lamb replacements have been selected and I will shear these with the ewes despite deciding not to run a ram with them this year.

The winter fodder on farm is just sufficient but I don’t have any surplus should we have a longer winter than normal.

I have sown extra Redstart this year to try to decrease my silage requirement for the winter. This was made easier by the fact I got the spring barley harvested early than I anticipated. It surpassed all expectations with a yield of 3t/ac.

With ram sales in full swing, as commercial farmers we should question what we want from a ram as they are 50% of our flock and depending on whether we keep replacements from them may have a major role in how our flock preforms in future years. I use the star ratings in conjunction with how the animal actually looks.

Sheep Ireland has a multi-breed ram sale in Tullamore this Saturday 25 August, which will be a great opportunity for anyone looking to purchase a ram for the coming season.