The recent farm walk here went well with nearly 200 people attending on the day. I have been busy since then going through the different groups of stock for different reasons. It felt a pity to dirty all the yards after the work put in to clean and wash them.

I hope to make my final decision on which of the ewe lambs will be retained for replacements this year shortly and as my flock is participating in Sheep Ireland’s CPT (Central Progeny Testing) programme, I must keep a proportion of ewe lambs from each of the sires used for mating on the farm from last year.

These ewe lambs will remain on the farm and continue to contribute to their sires’ (and bloodlines’) evaluations for the years to come as we see how they perform as breeding ewes in a commercial situation.

After these have been selected, I make up the difference from the best remaining ewe lambs available to me. This is made easier by the fact that all lambs’ performance data is being recorded on-farm.

With the final numbers selected, I will start to implement my vaccination policy. I will be vaccinating for toxoplasmosis again this year. Fortunately, I haven’t experienced any enzootic abortion here so I won’t need to vaccinate for it.

The vaccines for these are live and, as such, must be used immediately after receiving to guarantee best results. Administering early is essential in order to have protection from these problems before breeding begins as late exposure can be costly with ewe lambs aborting.

To give ewe lambs adequate protection, it should be given three to four weeks before rams are turned out and, from past experience, going sooner rather than later will give a better result.

I have also purchased in some replacement rams lately. The whole idea of having a closed flock is to reduce the risk of purchasing in disease. But wormer resistance is something that can also be purchased.

In order to minimise my chances of importing anything unwanted, I implement a quarantine on all livestock. Purchased stocked are housed after arrival and receive a drench to control worms.

Two wormers will be used. I will use a combination drench like Arrest first, which contains both levamisole and fenbendazole (yellow and white) followed by Cydectin (moxidectin).

This will effectually clean out the majority of intestinal parasites. After being housed for a few days, I will let the rams out into a paddock for a week or two before introducing to the other rams on the farm.

The expected dry spell hasn’t arrived and I have had to take out some more surplus grass as bales. This has brought my days ahead back to 18 for the coming week and, with growth just slightly ahead of demand things, are back on track.

I will probably start to apply a bag of CAN to the fields over the next few weeks as they are grazed out in order to help build covers for the autumn.