Many flock owners who scanned their ewes this year report increased mean flock scanned litter size. As mean flock litter size increases, the incidence of triplets increases.

For flocks with mean litter sizes of 1.8, 2.0 and 2.2, the incidence of triplets is expected to be 8%, 15% and 25% respectively.

Consequently, an issue that faces producers with prolific flocks is what to do with triplets.

In some flocks, one lamb from each set of triplets is either cross-fostered to single-bearing ewes, sold for cross-fostering or artificially reared.

These options have been discussed in this publication in recent weeks.

An alternative is to rear them as triplets. The aim of this article is to outline the management of triplet-rearing ewes at Athenry and the performance of their lambs.

The two major factors that determine individual lamb performance in a flock are its birth type (single, twin, triplet or quadruplet) and rearing type (ie, how many lambs are reared by a ewe).

At Athenry, ewes that give birth to singles, twins, triplets and quadruplets and rear either one or two lambs receive no concentrate post-lambing.

Ewes that are scanned as carrying triplets or quadruplets receive an extra 7kg of concentrates compared with twin-bearing ewes during late pregnancy. Ewes that gave birth to triplets are placed in individual lambing pens for up to seven days post-lambing.

At this stage, ewes deemed to produce adequate quantities of milk to suckle three lambs are turned out to pasture with their set of triplets and are supplemented with 0.5kg concentrates daily for five weeks post-lambing. Concentrate supplementation is then withdrawn.

Lambs reared as triplets have access to up to 300g of concentrates daily from about two weeks of age until weaning. This concentrate supplementation is withdrawn at weaning.

Additional concentrate supplementation per triplet-rearing ewe and her progeny, relative to a twin-rearing ewe, at Athenry is presented in Table 1. Ewes rearing triplets and her progeny receive an additional 85kg concentrates over that provided to ewes rearing twins. Consequently, the extra cost of rearing the additional lamb to weaning is approximately €25.

The mean effect of birth type and rearing type on lamb performance for the flocks at Athenry is presented in Table 2. Lambs born and reared as singles are approximately 6kg heavier at weaning than lambs born and reared as twins.

Meanwhile, lambs born as twins and reared as singles are approximately 4kg heavier at weaning than lambs born and reared as twins. The difference in weaning weight between singles and twins is due to a combination of differences in birth weight and the milk supply available from the dam.

Ewes rearing twins produce an average of 40% more milk than single-rearing ewes on a similar diet. Consequently, a lamb reared as a twin receives 30% less milk than one reared as a single.

As stated earlier, ewes at Athenry that give birth to and rear triplets receive 0.5kg of concentrates daily for five weeks post-lambing, and their progeny receive up to 300g concentrate/lamb daily until weaning – their lambs are up to 1kg heavier at weaning than lambs born and reared as twins (Table 2).