Reaping the benefits of planning on Cork hill farm

Speaking at the Teagasc BETTER farm programme hill sheep breeding farm walk hosted by Denis O’Riordan, Borlin, Bantry, Co Cork, Frank Campion, Teagasc highlighted the value of having a plan and being flexible with it if difficult weather conditions occur.

He said; “Denis has a plan for each part of the hill and what stock are going where at different times of the year. Look at the ground and hill you have, make a plan around it and be planning ahead throughout the year. Always give green ground a rest until it is needed.”

A typical year on Denis’s hill farm begins with weaning at the end of August.

With the exception of weaned ram lambs and cull ewes, who stay on the enclosed ground, all stock go back out on the hill after weaning. The replacement ewe lambs go to the hill in an effort to get them used to the hill again while replacement hoggets are on the hill the entire time.

Ewes are joined with rams from 10 November and as part of the BETTER farm programme Denis uses single sire mating and records breeding data. The ewes are on the lower enclosed ground which includes fenced hill for mating. After the breeding season they go back to the hill until February when they are brought in for pregnancy scanning.

Ewes are kept on the enclosed ground from scanning until after lambing which begins from 5 April. From mid-May onwards, the strong singles go off to the hill meaning these ewes are on hill for about nine months of the year. They are joined by some of the twin-suckling ewes and lambs from mid-July onwards.

Hard hill grazing

A lot of the ground that Denis farms is what he would classify as hard hill grazing. His farmyard is located at an altitude of 600ft above sea level with commonage land, where sheep have access to grazing, rising to over 1,700ft above sea level on the slopes of Cnoc Bui, the highest point on the Cork-Kerry border.

The farm consists of 271ha hill grazing of varying quality, 60ha of which is fenced off. Along with this, there are 8ha of enclosed lands containing better-quality grazing and an 8ha outfarm which is used for silage and is also used for grazing sheep and sucklers.

Denis joined the Teagasc BETTER farm sheep programme in 2014 and has been working with local B&T adviser Michael Connolly, Teagasc head of sheep programme Michael Gottstein and BETTER farm programme adviser Frank Campion.

One of the main factors limiting output on hill farms is high barren rates. Michael Gottstein explained; “On some flocks for every hundred ewes that are put in with the ram only 80 of them end up with lambs so 20 percent of them that you are feeding and dosing are producing absolutely nothing and that’s where the big difference comes in. That’s one of the things that was happening here and we looked closely at how hoggets were mated and Denis has now addressed any issues”.

Michael Gottstein complimented Denis on his excellent breeding performances comparing them with lowland sheep farming figures. Between 2015 and 2017 Denis joined 285 to 290 ewes to the ram and achieved an average of 94% lambing, with an average litter size of 1.3 lambs per ewe and an average of 1.1 lambs reared per ewe. For the season just past he was down about 20 lambs per hundred ewes to the ram in terms of litter size.

Challenging year

The problem in 2018 was that ewes were thin coming in off the hill because of a wet season last year and a difficult backend. As a result he ended up with thinner ewes with a lower pregnancy rate, a lower litter size and a really difficult spring compounded issues.

Farmers were told body condition is key. “If you have ewes that are in good body condition you will have higher pregnancy rates and higher litter sizes. Ewes that lamb down in better body condition will be better able to rear those lambs during bad weather events”.

Michael Gottstein advised farmers to assess their ewes and if they are thinner, they need to be brought in a bit earlier and fed a bit harder.

While it may not appear to be a big deal this year because sheep on the hill did well because it was a dry summer this could change if we get another challenging winter. The results of difficult weather show that because of body condition loss, the number of ewes that lamb down and their ability to rear the lambs is compromised.

This year Denis lost 0.3 lambs/ewe. Other years he only lost 0.2 lambs/ewe so he lost 10 extra lambs per 100 ewes to the ram due to weather. When combined with the lower litter size, Denis was back about thirty lambs across the farm and in a good or normal year he’d except to have thirty extra.

Maximizing use of enclosed land

Michael Gottstein encouraged hill farmers to use their green ground as much as they can. He said it can be used to flush ewes not to drive the amount of twins but to reduce the amount of empties and help ewes put on condition to rear their lambs in the spring.

Having access to enclosed areas also allows the crossing of poorer or older ewes with a lowland terminal ram to increase the value of progeny not used to generate flock replacements. Furthermore, Michael advised it would be worth trying to breed ewes at 18 months instead of waiting until they are 30 months.

“They are being carried on the hill and while not a huge cost, it’s still a cost to keep them when they aren’t producing anything”.

Recorded sheep were brought in to the O’Riordan farm at the beginning of the programme and the advantages are starting to show. With Denis also recording he is able to pick out his best performing sheep in terms of survivability and lamb growth. These are put with the Scottish Blackface rams with the female lambs from this mating kept as replacements while males are finished on the farm or sold as stores.

The other benefit of recording his sheep enabled Denis to identify his poorer performing ewes. The bottom 25% of ewes, along with older ewes that have done their time on the hill and poor BCS ewes are mated with a Suffolk ram. These cross bred lambs were more valuable at sale time and they grow faster, but these ewes need to stay on green ground to perform.

Lack of recording holding hill sector back

According to Michael Gottstein, the lack of recording of ancestry is holding back sheep breeding improvements on hill farms.

“There were Scotch ram lambs that achieved growth rates of 500 grams/day in the trials in Athenry. It would be brilliant if we knew who the parents were and we could go back and say these are really growth sheep but we can’t because none of the pedigree Scottish Blackface breeders are doing any parentage or recording and that’s a road block because when we identify a really good sheep and those that survive really well on the hill, we’ve nowhere to go”.

Michael added that this is a major barrier in making cumulative improvements in performance. “We have no parentage, no genetics and no analysis. People might not be happy to hear it but long term on hill sheep we are going nowhere until people start recording parentage on the pedigree sheep. If we do this we can start following the lines that survive on the hills. We can find the ewes that you can put up onto the hill that will come down with a 30kg or 35kg lamb and can go back and check if all her ancestors are doing the same. As opposed to the ewe that comes back down with a 17kg lamb because those are there as well”.

“For every lamb that we found in the Athenry trials that did 500 grams a day, we found another lamb that didn’t grow at all. There were lambs that went in for ten weeks of feeding and they came out a kilo heavier than when they went in. So we need to find out the parentage of them too and get rid of them lads because they are doing no one any good.”