About 170 delegates attended Tuesday’s Irish Grassland Association sheep conference held in the Horse and Jockey Hotel and walk on the farm of John large, Gortnahoe, Tipperary. The event, sponsored by MSD Animal Health and Mullnahone Co-op, attracted farmers and industry delegates from all corners of the country and they weren’t left disappointed with John providing an honest appraisal of his system.
An overview of the farm was briefly featured on the sheep pages a few weeks ago with more in-depth information, performance records for the year-to-date and the financial performance of the farm in 2017 presented on Tuesday.
To recap, John and his family run a flock of 630 ewes and 180 ewe lamb replacements alongside a 35-cow autumn calving suckler herd on 87ha. The farm is in three blocks with the home farm measuring 24.2ha while there is a 24ha outfarm block 0.5km away and a larger block of 39.5ha located 17km from the home farm. John also has access to 10 to 12ha of stubble ground for the winter and depending on the year and grass growth, some sheep may be transferred off the farm for temporary grazing.
Ewes lamb in early March, with the first batch artificially inseminated as part of the Sheep Ireland Central Progeny Test (CPT) programme and these are followed by repeats and ewe lambs. The sheep flock is stocked at 12 ewes/ha, while the beef system is stocked at 2.8LU/ha with excellent output of 823kg/ha. Yearling bulls are moved off the farm to a specialist finisher and are replaced by the purchase of Limousin-cross heifers from the dairy herd, from which replacements for the suckler herd are bred.
The focus is on operating an uncomplicated system with all cows calving outdoors to a good-quality terminal Angus bull. John says the suckler and sheep systems dovetail well together in terms of spreading the labour requirement, grassland management and improving cashflow.
The farm has always been integral to advancing sheep breeding in Ireland and previous to joining the CPT programme was involved with the Department of Agriculture and Teagasc in breed improvement initiatives. The big difference with the CPT programme that took longer to accustom to was the requirement to retain ewe lamb replacements from breeds that would not normally be maintained.
This was particularly the case at the outset with rams used to create genetic linkages while John says in recent years there has been higher use of rams with superior genetics and this is becoming apparent with increased performance. To demonstrate the spread in breeding, there were 21 sires used across Belclare, Charollais, Suffolk, Texel and Vendéen breeds in 2017. Eamon Wall of Sheep Ireland explained that there are females from over 140 different sires in the flock.
John says he has seen as much variation within breed as he has seen across the breeds used. “There are Charollais ewes with as much milk and are as good mothers as any ewes that I have while there are others that have none.”
Grass growth has increased sharply in recent days and swift action is required to keep grass quality on track.
Grass growth has increased sharply in recent days and swift action is required to keep grass quality on track.
Eamon says the generation of this commercial information is invaluable to identifying superior genetics from which to advance the sheep industry. “Every day we are here recording there is a ram benefitting from the data collected. There is maybe also one that is falling in the index but that is the information we need.”
Lambing pressure
The CPT aspect complicates management with artificial insemination of ewes and a resultant intense lambing period putting a lot of pressure on facilities and labour required.
“In one way it is good as I know that I will have a lot of ewes lambed inside a two-week period but when you are in that period it is relentless. This year we had about 100 ewes lambed on the busiest day. Each of these ewes has to be put into an individual pen for the Sheep Ireland lads to do their recording and there is 24-hour supervision needed. We have two lads on during the night and then during the day when recording is carried out there could be four or five in the shed.”
Operating as a CPT flock also has an influence on physical performance as detailed in Table 1. John explains that AI has significantly increased the barren rate with the flock increasing from about 2% barren to 5% to 6% in recent years.
“We have put repeat ewes out with rams for two cycles and found ewes with no raddle that have not come cycling.”
The lambing difficulty figure is also much higher than expected and John explains that part of this comes with the system being run.
Mortality
Wet fostering adds a few per cent to the figure while strenuous records are kept for any ewes requiring even a small level of assistance. The mortality figure is confined to birth and John estimates mortality to date of about 11%. This figure includes lambs lost from scanning to lambing commencing.
“The day you scan is the best it is ever going to get. We had a few abortions and a few ewes lost and if you add this to more barren ewes the figures don’t be long adding up. We usually aim to wean about 1.6 to 1.65 lambs per ewe to the ram and I am hoping this will be a bit higher this year with the higher scanning rate.”
Later March-born ewes and lambs on John Large's farm. Lambs in the CPT groups averaged 17.3kg at their 40-day weight.
The strong focus on recording persists right across the year with the flock recently undergoing its 40-day weight recording. Lambs weighed better than expected given the difficult weather and were comparable to 2017 at an average of 17.3kg liveweight at 46 days of age. This represented an average daily gain of 271g/day with liveweight varying from 15.3kg to 18.76kg across sires.
The average birth weight was 4.7kg with singles weighing 5.3kg, twins 5kg and triplets 4kg.
The variable performance between different sires was also shown in health traits. Lameness was recorded at an average of 6.55% across all lambs with a range of 0% to 31.58% across sires while ewes had a lameness score of 12.1%. Lambs had a dag score of 3.62 (range 3.19 to 3.96 across sires). Ewes weighed 71.7kg on average with an average body condition score of 3.17.
Financial performance
The sheep enterprise achieved a gross output value of €1,622/ha with costs of €640/ha. This resulted in a gross margin of €982/ha which positions the farm in the top few percent in the country. The fact that the sheep flock is operated at a high stocking rate with high levels of efficiency and generates a margin just shy of €1,000/ha underlines the importance of farmgate prices returning a viable price.
This is especially important in 2018 given much higher costs of production.
Mid-season lamb prices continued to come under pressure in the latter part of the year and this reinforces the importance of gaining market access into new markets such as China and the US. The beef system achieved a gross output of €1,707/ha and after variable costs of €820/ha returned a gross margin of €888/ha.
John says the most profound change made in his 40 years of farming is the continuous improvement in grassland management. “The money’s in the grass. We cannot get away from it and if we do the input costs are just too high. It doesn’t just happen overnight and it does cost money. Take this field – when I started farming it was in one 24ac field. I then split it into three, then into six and in the last few years I have been splitting these six temporarily with electric fencing.”
The home farm block of 24.2ha is now split into 16 permanent divisions ranging in size from 0.5ha to 2.16ha, with temporary divisions utilised to improve grassland management. There are currently eight sheep grazing groups – a single and a twin group with CPT ewes and lambs, three single/twin groups, two yearling hogget groups and a problem group with ewes.
While John is passionate about maximising grass performance, he is not against targeted use of meal feeding. Yearling ewes and problem ewes receive supplementation for four to five weeks post-lambing and these lambs have access to creep up until weaning. Post-weaning, lambs are split into four groups – ewe lamb replacements, a heavy lamb group, a medium lamb group and a light lamb group. Lambs move into the heavy lamb group approaching 40kg and these lambs which normally total around 120 head receive concentrate supplementation.
Forage rape is also sown with a split sowing date of July and August and this supports finishing of later-born lambs from October through to December. John says the one area he would like to improve is in achieving a higher drafting rate from October through to mid-December. 2017-born lambs achieved an average carcase weight of 20.5kg.
The farm has come out the other side of one of the worst spring periods that John can remember. At this stage last year, the farm had produced about 200 surplus bales of silage. The average farm cover has excelled beyond its target of 775kg DM/ha and was measured at 1,013kg DM/ha at the start of the week. Demand is high at 62kg DM/ha but growth is exceeding demand and days ahead have increased to 16 days. Teagasc adviser Jack Murphy says that the farm’s grazing infrastructure is a huge benefit and will allow surplus paddocks to be taken out of the rotation.
About 170 delegates attended Tuesday’s Irish Grassland Association sheep conference held in the Horse and Jockey Hotel and walk on the farm of John large, Gortnahoe, Tipperary. The event, sponsored by MSD Animal Health and Mullnahone Co-op, attracted farmers and industry delegates from all corners of the country and they weren’t left disappointed with John providing an honest appraisal of his system.
An overview of the farm was briefly featured on the sheep pages a few weeks ago with more in-depth information, performance records for the year-to-date and the financial performance of the farm in 2017 presented on Tuesday.
To recap, John and his family run a flock of 630 ewes and 180 ewe lamb replacements alongside a 35-cow autumn calving suckler herd on 87ha. The farm is in three blocks with the home farm measuring 24.2ha while there is a 24ha outfarm block 0.5km away and a larger block of 39.5ha located 17km from the home farm. John also has access to 10 to 12ha of stubble ground for the winter and depending on the year and grass growth, some sheep may be transferred off the farm for temporary grazing.
Ewes lamb in early March, with the first batch artificially inseminated as part of the Sheep Ireland Central Progeny Test (CPT) programme and these are followed by repeats and ewe lambs. The sheep flock is stocked at 12 ewes/ha, while the beef system is stocked at 2.8LU/ha with excellent output of 823kg/ha. Yearling bulls are moved off the farm to a specialist finisher and are replaced by the purchase of Limousin-cross heifers from the dairy herd, from which replacements for the suckler herd are bred.
The focus is on operating an uncomplicated system with all cows calving outdoors to a good-quality terminal Angus bull. John says the suckler and sheep systems dovetail well together in terms of spreading the labour requirement, grassland management and improving cashflow.
The farm has always been integral to advancing sheep breeding in Ireland and previous to joining the CPT programme was involved with the Department of Agriculture and Teagasc in breed improvement initiatives. The big difference with the CPT programme that took longer to accustom to was the requirement to retain ewe lamb replacements from breeds that would not normally be maintained.
This was particularly the case at the outset with rams used to create genetic linkages while John says in recent years there has been higher use of rams with superior genetics and this is becoming apparent with increased performance. To demonstrate the spread in breeding, there were 21 sires used across Belclare, Charollais, Suffolk, Texel and Vendéen breeds in 2017. Eamon Wall of Sheep Ireland explained that there are females from over 140 different sires in the flock.
John says he has seen as much variation within breed as he has seen across the breeds used. “There are Charollais ewes with as much milk and are as good mothers as any ewes that I have while there are others that have none.”
Grass growth has increased sharply in recent days and swift action is required to keep grass quality on track.
Grass growth has increased sharply in recent days and swift action is required to keep grass quality on track.
Eamon says the generation of this commercial information is invaluable to identifying superior genetics from which to advance the sheep industry. “Every day we are here recording there is a ram benefitting from the data collected. There is maybe also one that is falling in the index but that is the information we need.”
Lambing pressure
The CPT aspect complicates management with artificial insemination of ewes and a resultant intense lambing period putting a lot of pressure on facilities and labour required.
“In one way it is good as I know that I will have a lot of ewes lambed inside a two-week period but when you are in that period it is relentless. This year we had about 100 ewes lambed on the busiest day. Each of these ewes has to be put into an individual pen for the Sheep Ireland lads to do their recording and there is 24-hour supervision needed. We have two lads on during the night and then during the day when recording is carried out there could be four or five in the shed.”
Operating as a CPT flock also has an influence on physical performance as detailed in Table 1. John explains that AI has significantly increased the barren rate with the flock increasing from about 2% barren to 5% to 6% in recent years.
“We have put repeat ewes out with rams for two cycles and found ewes with no raddle that have not come cycling.”
The lambing difficulty figure is also much higher than expected and John explains that part of this comes with the system being run.
Mortality
Wet fostering adds a few per cent to the figure while strenuous records are kept for any ewes requiring even a small level of assistance. The mortality figure is confined to birth and John estimates mortality to date of about 11%. This figure includes lambs lost from scanning to lambing commencing.
“The day you scan is the best it is ever going to get. We had a few abortions and a few ewes lost and if you add this to more barren ewes the figures don’t be long adding up. We usually aim to wean about 1.6 to 1.65 lambs per ewe to the ram and I am hoping this will be a bit higher this year with the higher scanning rate.”
Later March-born ewes and lambs on John Large's farm. Lambs in the CPT groups averaged 17.3kg at their 40-day weight.
The strong focus on recording persists right across the year with the flock recently undergoing its 40-day weight recording. Lambs weighed better than expected given the difficult weather and were comparable to 2017 at an average of 17.3kg liveweight at 46 days of age. This represented an average daily gain of 271g/day with liveweight varying from 15.3kg to 18.76kg across sires.
The average birth weight was 4.7kg with singles weighing 5.3kg, twins 5kg and triplets 4kg.
The variable performance between different sires was also shown in health traits. Lameness was recorded at an average of 6.55% across all lambs with a range of 0% to 31.58% across sires while ewes had a lameness score of 12.1%. Lambs had a dag score of 3.62 (range 3.19 to 3.96 across sires). Ewes weighed 71.7kg on average with an average body condition score of 3.17.
Financial performance
The sheep enterprise achieved a gross output value of €1,622/ha with costs of €640/ha. This resulted in a gross margin of €982/ha which positions the farm in the top few percent in the country. The fact that the sheep flock is operated at a high stocking rate with high levels of efficiency and generates a margin just shy of €1,000/ha underlines the importance of farmgate prices returning a viable price.
This is especially important in 2018 given much higher costs of production.
Mid-season lamb prices continued to come under pressure in the latter part of the year and this reinforces the importance of gaining market access into new markets such as China and the US. The beef system achieved a gross output of €1,707/ha and after variable costs of €820/ha returned a gross margin of €888/ha.
John says the most profound change made in his 40 years of farming is the continuous improvement in grassland management. “The money’s in the grass. We cannot get away from it and if we do the input costs are just too high. It doesn’t just happen overnight and it does cost money. Take this field – when I started farming it was in one 24ac field. I then split it into three, then into six and in the last few years I have been splitting these six temporarily with electric fencing.”
The home farm block of 24.2ha is now split into 16 permanent divisions ranging in size from 0.5ha to 2.16ha, with temporary divisions utilised to improve grassland management. There are currently eight sheep grazing groups – a single and a twin group with CPT ewes and lambs, three single/twin groups, two yearling hogget groups and a problem group with ewes.
While John is passionate about maximising grass performance, he is not against targeted use of meal feeding. Yearling ewes and problem ewes receive supplementation for four to five weeks post-lambing and these lambs have access to creep up until weaning. Post-weaning, lambs are split into four groups – ewe lamb replacements, a heavy lamb group, a medium lamb group and a light lamb group. Lambs move into the heavy lamb group approaching 40kg and these lambs which normally total around 120 head receive concentrate supplementation.
Forage rape is also sown with a split sowing date of July and August and this supports finishing of later-born lambs from October through to December. John says the one area he would like to improve is in achieving a higher drafting rate from October through to mid-December. 2017-born lambs achieved an average carcase weight of 20.5kg.
The farm has come out the other side of one of the worst spring periods that John can remember. At this stage last year, the farm had produced about 200 surplus bales of silage. The average farm cover has excelled beyond its target of 775kg DM/ha and was measured at 1,013kg DM/ha at the start of the week. Demand is high at 62kg DM/ha but growth is exceeding demand and days ahead have increased to 16 days. Teagasc adviser Jack Murphy says that the farm’s grazing infrastructure is a huge benefit and will allow surplus paddocks to be taken out of the rotation.
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