Well the grass has kept growing since my last article, however, not quite as strongly as we would have liked and has definitely slowed right up over the past couple of weeks. We sold over 300 store lambs in late August to a poorer trade than we would have liked, but it reflected the lighter weights and the lack of grass and confidence from the buyers. Selling a large batch of lambs at this point in the season was necessary for us this year to relieve the pressure on the farm and the bank balance; unfortunately both were fairly short-lived.

We have been focusing on building grass covers for tupping and the winter by getting as many mouths off farm as we can just now. The ewe lambs have had their Heptavac P, Footvax and Zolvix and are away to wintering along with the smaller end of store lambs. The remaining finishing lambs are still paddock-grazing silage aftermaths and starting to make up for a poor start in life. The ewes are also rotational grazing which is a much earlier start than last year but hopefully the extra effort of keeping them moving now will allow another graze of fields later in the winter which would not be possible if they were bared off with set stocking just now.

Tupping

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We have purchased a second Highlander tup this year from Innovis and he and his mate will go to around 175 Aberfield gimmers. My intention is to criss-cross breed the A-flock between the Aberfield and Highlander, so it will be good to get a decent batch of Highlander lambs on the ground next year and really analyse how they perform.

We are currently working through the ewes with a pre-tupping fluke dose and mineral bolus; we don’t tend to routine worm adult sheep so only lean ewes will get a wormer. The ewes have mended up well after the massive challenge they have faced and surely what we are left with is a naturally-selected hardy flock! We are going to take some before and after individual dung samples as we have a suspicion we may have some resistance to Triclabendazol.

Deer

We have recently completed a further section of deer fencing which now gives us 25ha to work with. The hinds were in good condition going in to the rut and we supplemented the yearling hinds for three weeks prior to the rut to try and flush them and be a bit kinder to them after they were tight for grass through the great drought of 2018. The stags seem to be busy and there is a lot of roaring going on so here’s hoping we have plenty of calves next summer.

The hinds will winter outside on baled silage and concentrates where required later on in the winter and the calves will be housed.

We have some shed alterations to get on with over the next few weeks before the cattle that we winter arrive. The new deer enterprise will require one of our former cattle courts to be converted into accommodation for deer calves, which will leave us a bit tight. I’ve decided to put a centre feed passage in to the sheep shed and use at least half of it as cattle housing.

We are now lambing everything outside and the shed isn’t being utilised as well as it should be so this should give us a few more options and it lends itself well to a fairly easy and low-cost conversion.