Overall lamb performance this year has been excellent, but I should really have an asterisk beside that statement, along with the explanation that growth rates were, at times, “meal assisted”.

And therefore, just like those sprinters whose winning gallops cannot be entered into the record books because they were “wind assisted”, I have to hold my hand up and admit that my boasts are not true and proper.

Nevertheless, it has been an interesting season for analysing growth rates, because they have rarely shown such a mixture of highs and lows.

Good start

After a fine start, the now-forgotten drought played a major part in the decision to begin creep-feeding in the middle of May. Initially, this was only for one or two batches, since I was still playing my ace card, and taking full advantage of clean grazing.

Unfortunately, even worm-free pasture cannot sustain high liveweight gains if there’s nothing for them to eat, and gradually more and more lambs had to get a wee helping hand in the form of more concentrate.

They say you learn nothing from success, and failure is a far better teacher. If this is correct, then some of my management techniques would qualify for the Open University.

I have definitely learned that putting a flock of doubles through a lean period of tight grazing (aiming for a lower input, longer-term keep) will certainly let them hang around on farm for ages.

The problem is that the overall result highlights an appalling lifetime daily liveweight gain, with lambs that end up needing a bit of meal to get them finished anyway.

I’ve always wondered about these lambs that don’t go away until later in the autumn, and I don’t see much point in trumpeting how much weight they gained during late September/early October, when the reality is they were only putting on 120g per day for long periods in June and July. Or even less.

I also discovered that kill-out percentages from grass-fed lambs (with no meal) at the end of the summer can be as low as 40% (three weeks after the introduction of a lamb blend, this rose to 45%).

This is like other years, but this season I was obsessively watching liveweights, due to participating in a contracted lamb price scheme.

Without breaking the confidentiality part of said document, it was an executive decision (by me and the dog) to ensure that a targeted number of lambs fell outside the specified weight limits, and therefore achieved open market price. You don’t have to be a genius to read between the lines on that one.

Either way, the steady drop in killing out figures was fascinating to witness. Those early creamy singles started at well over 50%; this soon tailed off to just half weight, then weaning occurred and we hit another low point.

One load in particular proved an eye opener, with lambs that weighed 48kg in the bridge struggling to get anywhere near the desired 21kg carcase.

Solution

I mentioned in the Irish Farmers Journal months ago that I had 36 pet lambs reared on farm, as well as mostly doubles from the ewe lambs.

Sometime around the middle of May they looked great, but between then and now, something went sadly awry. A lot of them are still here, although I know the solution for another year – more meal earlier in the season.

Again, the drought had a negative effect on performance, coupled with my thrawn refusal to feed everything during a period when grass had completely stopped. I thought I’d be clever, and tailor the concentrate to those lambs that were likely to get away before mid-July.

There are currently 65 lambs left on farm (out of a total of 470) and they are having to eat meal now anyway to ensure they go before Christmas. In addition, they’ll massacre a few more paddocks of grass that would be greatly appreciated by a number of other groups of sheep or cattle.

Ah well, all these lessons are bound to ensure that I make no mistakes at all next year.

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