I’d like to start off by wishing everyone a Happy New Year. So far, 2019 has been very welcoming weather wise.

The majority of the ewes are still outside grazing Redstart or stubble ground.

As always in January with the start of the new year, I will be spending a good bit of time in the farm office filling out a number of paper exercises.

First up was the national sheep census, which required us to take a count of the sheep and their age categories on 31 December.

These forms must be returned to the Department by 31 January and are the basis for our stocking rate for the Sheep Welfare Scheme.

Secondly, there is the task of filling out a profit monitor.

As mentioned before, I fill one of these out every year and find it really useful in helping to identify areas in which I can improve farm financial performance.

There is no point just throwing in any old figure, as for this to work properly spending time filling in the form as accurately as possible is the only way it will be useful.

By comparing it to previous years, I am able to see where previous changes to my farm management have either improved or not.

It provides a focus for the year ahead and allows me an opportunity to try to work on any areas that need improvement.

We scanned the ewes that were artificially inseminated here as part of the CPT programme on Monday.

The results have improved slightly on last year with a scan of 1.89 lambs per ewe inseminated, compared with 1.8 last year.

The biggest issue seems to be the percentage of ewes that don’t hold to service and show no signs of having cycled afterwards for the rams to pick up.

From what I can make out, it can take up to six cycles for them to come into a proper heat realistically ruling them out for this year’s breeding.

I am in two minds about how to deal with these as most would be fine next year if used under natural service conditions.

I may consider retaining some of the hoggets from these empties and run them with the ewe lambs for the year.

I will be going over my list of lambing essentials from last year and seeing what I have still in stock before ordering in

We also scanned the natural service ewes last month which included a batch of ewes which were mated through cervical AI.

The group scan results were excellent, with 2.15 lambs per ewe to the ram.

Out of these, six ewes were not showing in lamb and were rescanned this week, with all proving to be pregnant.

With the scanning now complete, I will be starting to get things ready for the spring.

I will be going over my list of lambing essentials from last year and seeing what I have still in stock before ordering in.

Spending a little time doing this now takes a lot of stress out of the lambing and saves me a lot of time during the spring as anything I require, I will have on farm when it’s needed.

Along with the essentials being ordered, I will be purchasing my 10-in-1 vaccine now too.

As a supplier to ICM, I was very disappointed that they didn’t display their charging policy in regards to clipping sheep in their plants like the other factories in this publication just before Christmas.

As a supplier I am well aware of the charges that have been imposed, but the indifference that they showed to myself and the other farmers who supply them by not being open about it, unlike the other factories, is what annoyed me the most.