Grass continues to grow at pace here on the farm and with all the ewes now finally dried off, there is a good surplus of supply present.

Some of this surplus is good after-grass that has gone too strong for the lambs to graze and it will be used to complete the winter fodder needs of my sheep, while the excess will be sold off, along with any other surpluses of grass that appear here over the next while.

Silage situation

I am hoping the fact that all silage was saved while it was still at a leafy stage will result in high-quality silage that will reduce my necessity to feed high levels of meal to ewes next spring.

As I’ve mentioned, all ewes have now been weaned and many of us farmers would count this as the beginning of the breeding season.

Realistically, though, the breeding season starts in the spring when the ewes lamb down, as keeping records about ewes’ performance from lambing to weaning feeds into decisions we make at this stage.

These records allow us to remove the least-productive animals from our flock, thus giving us a better chance to make our flocks more efficient.

Cull ewes

The first load of cull ewes left the farm last week. These ewes had problems with teeth, elders or ones that had picked up two ear notches over the last year. These notches can arise for a variety of reasons, but repeat lameness is the main one.

The system works well for identifying repeat offenders, as it is easy to notch a ewe’s ear when you’re treating her. It is like the yellow card system in soccer – two yellows and you’re gone.

As I have nearly finished building ewe numbers on the farm, I will now go through the performance records of the remaining ewes to decide on which of them will be culled or kept for another year’s breeding.

Preferential treatment

All the ewes will be body condition scored and any ewes that need to gain condition will be separated and given preferential treatment.

The remainder of the ewes will follow behind the lambs, cleaning out paddocks fully in order to keep grass quality at a premium.

The rams are also getting a good checking over at the moment and any rams that have been repeatedly lame will also be culled, as this is a trait I don’t want to breed into my replacements.

I will have to make a final decision on how many new rams I need to purchase for the farm shortly, as I like to get them on site as soon as possible to allow them good time to settle into their new surroundings before the actual start of the breeding season.