It’s a quiet time on the farm at the moment. All the 2017 lambs have long since departed and we’ve just taken the ram out from his job of making the 2018 ones.

We were finishing lambs in November and December for the last two years, but decided to try something different this year and sold stores back in August.

They were mostly wethers out of a Llyen ram and we took the view that finishing them would require more experience and time than we would have, especially in the dark evenings after the clocks went back.

It was a compromise: selling 35 store lambs (at around 40kg each) was not part of our overall plan. But the Llyen ram gave us plenty of nice replacement ewe lambs, so we were resigned to “taking the hit”.

In actual fact, it’s turned out to be one of the best decisions we’ve made since starting to farm again.

Given the amount of feed and time that would have gone into them, it’s impossible to see how we could have made the same margin if we tried to finish those wethers.

I won’t bore anyone with the figures, but based on my back-of-a-cigarette-box calculations, we’d have gained an extra €5/head had we finished them. And that’s before you factor in our own labour plus additional mortality rates, medicines and vet’s bills that would arise from carrying larger numbers.

Price of a pint per head

Unless we had 100+ lambs, it’d be hard to justify the extra work for the price of a pint per head. And even then, there’s the negative effect this extra work would have had on morale.

Instead, we’ve had a clear run since August to look after the ewes and prepare the shed for the eight to 10 weeks they’ll spend indoors from mid-December to late-February. We’ve also had head space to look at where we are and where we’re going.

The value of this time to plan – physically and mentally – is certainly worth more than a fiver per head of narrow-shouldered wether lambs.

Lest anyone think smugness is creeping into the operation, I should add that we will not follow the same path next year.

We’ve used a Charollais ram on the ewes for breeding this year, meaning all terminal lambs in 2018, that will finish easier and earlier.

The plan then is to use a Suffolk ram with the Charollais ram for breeding next year, and perhaps keep some ewe lambs off the Suffolk as replacements.

Only time will tell if this plan works. We’ll be taking back more land that’s currently leased out next year too, so Brexit and Trump are not the only uncertainties we need to consider!

Kieran Sullivan and his brother farm part-time in Co Waterford. You can follow him on Twitter: @kieran_sullivan

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