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Growing more grass and increasing kilos of lamb sold per hectare is the focus for Antrim sheep farmer Eoin McCambridge.
He runs 500 ewes on 52.4ha of grassland outside Ballyvoy, and although land is free draining, the whole farm is classified as a severely disadvantaged area (SDA).
Speaking to members of the Ulster Grassland Society during a farm visit last week, Eoin said that the breeding policy and grazing system is changing on the farm with the aim to increase output and margins.
Eoin switched from dairy to sheep farming around 15 years ago and the farm was initially stocked with Suffolk Cheviot and Suffolk Texel cross ewes tupped with Texel and Charollais rams.
He said that lambs had good conformation and hybrid vigour, but he felt ewes were getting too big and could have been more prolific.
He bought a Belclare ram four years ago with the aim of reducing ewe size and maintenance requirements, and increasing lambs sold per ewe.
Lleyn rams were also introduced more recently for the same reason and around half the ewes on the farm now have Belclare or Lleyn genetics.
Approximately 60 ewe lambs are retained as replacements each year and 50 Lleyn and Belclare hoggets are also bought in.
The purchased Lleyn and Belclare hoggets are put to Suffolk rams and some of these lambs are retained. The Suffolk Belclare cross ewes are then tupped with Charollais and Texel rams, with Belclare rams used on the Suffolk Lleyn cross ewes.
Extra lambs
“Lambs are not grading as well for conformation, and carcase weights are lighter since I changed breeding policy.
"The average carcase weight is now 20kg, but I am not hung up on getting a 21kg U grade lamb. The benefit of it is not as important as having extra lambs to sell,” Eoin said.
Increased ewe prolificacy can cause problems with too many surplus lambs from triplets and quads.
However, Eoin said that an effective pet lamb rearing regime allows these lambs to thrive and finish well.
He bought an automatic lamb feeder this year and reared 65 pets with only one mortality.
Lambs are put into a small nursery pen once they get colostrum and are transferred to a bigger pen with the automatic feeder after they become confident at suckling.
“Young lambs learn how to drink from watching older lambs in the nursery pen. You can rear pets if you put in the effort, although I haven’t counted up the costs yet to see if it was worth my while,” Eoin said.
Performance
Increased output has improved gross margin per ewe to close to the top 10% of CAFRE benchmarked farms (Table 1).
A high stocking rate of 2.09 cow equivalents per hectare (4.23 ewes per acre) puts Eoin’s flock at the top end for carcase sold per hectare.
Gross margin was £80 per ewe in 2016/17 which equates to £836/ha.
Until recently, sheep were set stocked when grazing. Eoin has now started grazing sheep rotationally in fields and plans to sub-divide more fields with electric fencing next year to develop a rotational grazing system further.
Although the focus is on growing more grass, Eoin said that he plans to increase ewe numbers and stocking rate slowly as he is wary that wet weather in the spring and autumn can put pressure on housing facilities and poach fields.
There is no land rented or winter grazing taken, and ewes are housed from late December until they lamb from mid-March onwards. Body condition scoring takes place regularly on the farm and ewes are grouped and fed accordingly.
“We have been using a diet feeder during the winter for around 10 years."
I find it keeps ewes content as they don’t rush to troughs at feeding time and you can be more accurate with what you are feeding too.
"The diet feeder also saves labour with feeding taking around an hour and a half here,” Eoin said.
Around 6ha to 7ha are reseeded by Eoin each year using minimum cultivation techniques. This usually takes place after weaning in late July, with the field burned off with glyphosate and given one pass with an APV spring tine seeder.
“The tines on it are bigger than most seeders so the ground gets well scraped when you pass over it,” Eoin said.
If silage ground is being reseeded, there is no spraying off and the seeder is used straight after silage has been cut.
Intermediate and late perennial ryegrass varieties with small and medium leaf white clovers are used in mixtures. Eoin spot sprays for thistles, nettles and docks and blanket sprays swards for chick weed.
Silage
His approach to silage differs from most sheep farmers and perhaps reflects his dairying past. Silage fields are not grazed at all during the spring and first cut is usually harvested in late May.
Fields get slurry from the sheep house followed by 1.5 to two bags of nitrogen in the third week of March.
All silage is in clamps and first cut this year had a metabolisable energy of 11.2MJ/kg at 21% dry matter.
Eoin usually takes a second cut in July, but leftover silage from last year and a good first cut in May, meant he did not cut twice this year.
The emphasis on making good quality silage means concentrates fed per ewe is low at 56kg.
The majority of lambs are also finished off grass with only the last 20 to 30 lambs fed meal in the autumn. Eoin said that he aims for daily liveweight gains of 250kg to 300g at grass.
There is probably more fertiliser sown here than on most sheep farms.
"We usually sow a bag of nitrogen per acre every six to seven weeks during the grazing season, and then compound fertilisers are used near the end of the season if needed,” Eoin said.
Short rotation coppice willow was planted in 2007 on 15.6ha and is harvested in three-year cycles. Eoin chips and dries the crop and also buys in additional forestry timber for processing.
The willow yields around 10t DM/ha and most of the dried chip is bought by a company that makes processed fire logs.
“A willow crop has a 20-year productive life. We are half way there but a few gaps are appearing in places so it may need re-planting in a few spots before then,” Eoin said.
Hyrdo turbine
A 30kW hydro turbine was also installed at a river on the farm around 10 years ago. The site had previously been used for hydro power with a smaller 10kW turbine present for around 80 years before this.
At peak, 500 litres of water flows through the new turbine every second and most of the electricity is exported to the national grid.
The turbine produces around 200,000 kWh annually and has three cells which switch off individually in times of low rainfall.
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