The recent heavy rain has brought more of a winter feel, as the stock is checked in the fields and the mud squelches under foot.

At present, the autumn grazing plan is fairly on target, within the region of 65% of the farm grazed out and closed up for the grazing next spring. Unfortunately, the heavy rain has reduced the potential to best utilise the grass that remains available on the fields here, with a considerable amount walked into the ground.

Removing rams

The rams will be removed from the different mobs early next month, bringing an end to the breeding period. I plan on dividing the ewes into groups according to their forthcoming lambing dates. Initially, I will split them into three main groups - the early ewes, the Central Progeny Testing (CPT) group and the repeat ewes. With this done, I will house the ewes that are due to lamb down first in early December, prior to scanning.

This will leave the ewes, which are due to lamb later in the spring, outside along with the repeat ewes.

Lambs

The lambs are starting to get scarce on the ground here as well, with only 10% remaining. I housed them here last week after the last draft was selected for the factory, with the aim of getting them finished prior to Christmas and increasing the amount of grass that will be available to the ewes. With this in mind, I will start to increase the rate of meal being supplemented to them over the next few weeks, to go onto an ad-lib feeding regime while they are in the shed. Looking at the markets at present, prices seem to be getting a slight lift due to the recent wet weather, but you also have to consider that the number of lambs left on farms are getting scarce. Add this to the extra lambs that have been killed from the UK in the run up to the last Brexit deadline and I would guess that lamb prices should increase further still.

Cost

Every year, we argue that we need an average price of €5/kg (or €100 per lamb) to stay profitable and when you tally up the price paid weekly over the year, it is roughly about that. Unfortunately, as farmers, we don’t have a regular supply of lambs to sell throughout the year to benefit from this average price, so some of us buy store lambs, others produce early lambs and the vast majority produce mid-season lamb, which sits smack bang in the middle of the price at its lowest and has very little chance of gaining the €5 average.

The costs of mid-season lamb are lower than the other two systems, but are increasing annually, no matter how efficient you become due to higher input costs and additional market requirements.

We are producing a product that has one of the highest welfare standards, yet we are being asked to trade against products from countries which fall short of this particular mark. A level playing field would be nice, but I for one would be against dropping our welfare standards.

IFA president

These are some of the issues that face whoever becomes our new IFA president. The IFA is in the middle of a presidential election campaign at present.

I’m not going to go into the strengths and weakness of each of the different candidates, as that is for us as members to decide for ourselves, I would however encourage all IFA members to research the candidates themselves and make the effort to vote, as whoever is elected president and vice president will be our representatives for the forthcoming term.

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