Antibiotic usage: There is growing scrutiny building around the use of antibiotics, with blanket administration likely to become a focal point in the coming years. This is stemming from growing concerns around antimicrobial resistance.

The main drivers of antibiotic use at this time of year relate to lameness, blanket treatment for E coli scour and in the face of an outbreak of enzootic abortion. Treatment for E coli scour is particularly worrying because there has been a small number of cases of suspected resistance to preventative treatments used, which leaves the farms in question very exposed.

Therefore, it is in a farmers’ own interest to pull back from blanket treatment where possible so that if an outbreak does occur, there are treatment options available. Some farmers who have successfully reduced their reliance have done so over a number of seasons.

For example, they have pulled back from administering treatments to lambs born in a single litter followed by twin litters and, where there is a foreseen risk, continued treating lambs most likely of consuming lower levels of colostrum – triplet and quad litters and lambs born to ewes with colostrum yield issues. Along with ensuring lambs receive sufficient colostrum, hygiene is the other major determinant in preventing disease from establishing.

Protein content: Mid-season lambing flocks will soon be entering late-pregnancy feeding. Scanning operators report positive breeding performance and higher average litter sizes. The advice in terms of protein content is to offer ewes with a medium litter size of 1.8 lambs to 1.9 lambs concentrate supplementation containing at least 18% crude protein while the advice is to increase this to 20% to 21% crude protein for high-prolificacy flocks scanning in excess of two lambs per ewe.

Protein demand spikes in the final two weeks of pregnancy but for most flocks ordering meal a few weeks out from lambing there will not be a huge financial gain from delaying introducing the high-protein feed. It will also allow ewes to become accustomed to the diet and prevent any upset from a change in diet in the final two weeks of pregnancy.

Protected urea: This week, we feature a report from the Teagasc sheep conference and discuss how improvements can be made in the efficiency of nitrogen use, highlighting how protected urea can deliver significant benefits. There is also an article by Jack Kennedy that addresses some of the questions which have been raised on protected urea and discusses products on the market.

Sheep census returns: The deadline for returning the 2019 sheep and goat census is next Friday 31 January for hard copies. The deadline for returns completed online is Friday 14 February . To complete the census online, log on to your agfood account and select the tab “animal identification and movement”. Farms with mixed cattle and sheep enterprises will be then given a cattle-keeper option and a sheep-keeper option. Select the sheep option and then in the top left section click on census and create to bring up the 2019 input sheet.