Sheep Management: organic feed, thin ewes and identifying problems

Farmers sourcing organic feed should investigate the quality of ingredients in the mix with reports continuing to indicate some mediocre feed on the market.

Darren Carty

29 January 2025

Sheep Management: organic feed, thin ewes and identifying problems

It may not be convenient, but studying the ingredient list will give an idea of the energy value of feeds.

Feed: Reports from organic farmers and advisers continue to report significant variation in the quality of organic concentrate feed in the market. There is no requirement for feed millers to denote the energy or protein content of concentrates, but by law ingredients must be included in descending order of inclusion.

Feed: Reports from organic farmers and advisers continue to report significant variation in the quality of organic concentrate feed in the market.

There is no requirement for feed millers to denote the energy or protein content of concentrates, but by law ingredients must be included in descending order of inclusion.

While not ideal, studying the ingredient list will give an idea of the energy value of feeds. The aim is for high-energy cereals such as barley, wheat, maize, and oats to be the primary ingredients while pulps such as beet pulp and soyabean meal and distillers grains are also relatively high-energy.

Medium-energy ingredients include maize gluten, soya hulls and rapeseed meal.

Alarm bells should ring where low-energy feeds such as pollard/wheat feed, palm kernal, sunflower or oatfeed are high up the list of ingredients: are these are poor-quality feeds, in terms of energy?

Many organic farmers would be much better served by purchasing Irish-grown feed with supplies of combi-crop and certified feed grain available. Much of this feed is at a lower cost than some of the imported feed and producers should weigh up their options before buying. Some of the feed is in the east of the country, but can be delivered in tonne bags. There may be good options for groups of farmers in the same area to reduce delivery costs by ordering together.

The best situation is farmers planning in advance. The Department of Agriculture’s organic trading hub, organictradinghub.ie/ is a good resource to see what feed is available.

Think ewe management: Farmers attending this week’s Teagasc Lowland Sheep Conferences are being told that the management of thin ewes can have a profound effect on improving flock productivity. Analysis from records on ewe performance presented by Frank Campion, Teagasc, shows that ewes which were below optimum condition at key timeframes achieved inferior performance to ewes in optimum body condition.

This manifested in lambs recording poorer performance from birth to weaning, lower ewe output and higher culling rates. This led to replacements rates being recorded at 30% in some flocks with others, which in the main, hit ewe body condition targets, operating with replacement rates of 20% to 25%.

Options to address ewe condition are limited as ewes enter late pregnancy, but Frank outlined that steps can still be taken that will limit any further deterioration in productivity. He advised farmers to test the quality of their forage, plan concentrate supplementation rates according to these results and batch ewes for preferential treatment.

Practical steps such as batching batching ewes of a lower litter size and short of body condition with ewes of a higher litter size will allow for practical preferential treatment. Seamus Fagan from the regional veterinary laboratory also presented results of the recent ‘Thin Ewe Study’ conducted by the Department of Agriculture and Teagasc which shows the value of investigating why some ewes are thin in a flock for no apparent reason.

The second Lowland Conference takes place in the Knightsbrook Hotel, Trim, Co Meath on Thursday 30 January at 7pm. The Teagasc Hill Sheep Conference will take place on Wednesday 19 February in the Park Hotel, Dungarvan, Co Waterford.