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Sheep farming is a funny thing. You either love it or hate it – there never seems to be any middle ground. I was talking to a neighbour recently who decided to convert from sheep. He has been lambing ewes for about 30 years, and I had thought things were still going well.
Last year he had around 200 to lamb, but his big problem was that he only ended up with 200 lambs to sell. It just isn’t good enough to survive at sheep farming, so he decided to pull the plug.
I can sympathise with him. I remember when there was a headage payment on sheep, I used to keep over 200 ewes, and I was hardly ever able to sell more than one lamb per ewe that went to the ram.
In one regard, it was easy – lots of subsidy and not much hassle. But without a payment per head the sums just didn’t add up.
At times I have wondered if I’m being too severe on them, but I’m determined to make these sheep pay their way
Over the last 10 years or so I have tried to reverse this trend. I have used all maternal genetics to try and breed ewes that are able to wean two lambs each. I have culled hard every year and have had a replacement rate of 30% on some occasions.
The ram goes in for 32 days and that’s it. Anything that isn’t in-lamb is culled. Any ewe that does anything wrong at lambing is marked for culling. Any that have sore feet (at any time) are marked for culling. At times I have wondered if I’m being too severe on them, but I’m determined to make these sheep pay their way.
When picking ewe lambs for replacements I used to keep the ones that were left near the end, which was a foolish thing to be doing. Now I take the first pick of the heaviest lambs before I sell any to the factory. Have I made any progress? Scanning results this winter would suggest that my strict regime is paying off. One hundred-and-twenty ewes went to the ram this year for 32 days, and after scanning only one was not in-lamb. Overall scanning result was 232%.
In addition, 30 ewe lambs went to the ram for 32 days and only one was not in-lamb. Overall result for the ewe lambs was 155%.
Improving
My scanning results have been improving every year, but this year it has moved to a new level. I can hear people saying that I have far too many lambs in the ewes and I am going to have no end of hassle. There is a small voice in my head saying exactly the same thing.
I honestly don’t know how you could manage without scanning
With 42 sets of triplets and five sets of quads there is going to be a lot of extra lambs to try and keep alive, and get reared. It’s quite possible that I’ll be writing in this paper after lambing about all the problems I have had.
But I am under no illusions about what lies ahead. At this point I am trying to ensure that the ewes (and lambs) are adequately fed and that I can save as many lambs as possible.
Due to scanning I can batch the ewes and feed according to requirements. I honestly don’t know how you could manage without scanning. There are also other things that I am looking into with regard to feeding the surplus lambs.
Challenge
So, while it has been a tremendous scanning result, the challenge now is to translate that into a high weaning and selling percentage. In my opinion, a ewe is a waste of time rearing one lamb, but in the quest to wean two lambs per ewe you’re going to have to deal with a lot of threes and fours.
Hopefully all this effort in trying to improve my sheep enterprise will be rewarded and I can show that sheep have a future on this farm.
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