Not being afraid of change and keeping the farm moving forward are key drivers in working towards achieving a profitable sheep enterprise for Welsh farmers Ben Anthony and Diana Fairclough.

The couple took over Diana’s parents’ 58.7ha (145-acre) family farm in 2010 and set about putting plans in place to grow the sheep flock. At the time the farm, which also includes 14.16ha (35 acres) of woodland, was described as being primarily a suckler cow unit.

The suckler herd reduced from 40 cows and young followers to where it stands today with 17 suckler cows, their followers and 14 dairy-bred store cattle.

This was one contributor in allowing an increase in the ewe flock from 300 ewes to today’s flock of 570 ewes and 160 ewe lambs, along with renting a 36.42ha (90-acre) block of land adjoining the farm and an 8ha (20-acre) parcel five miles away from the farm.

Ben explains that being more passionate about sheep was one of the reasons for the decline in the suckler herd. It was also influenced by practical reasons. The farm is located in a high-risk TB area and it was felt that running at such high cow numbers was too much of a risk to take if the herd became infected and young cattle had to be retained with insufficient housing available.

Becoming a Farming Connect monitor farm brought a focus on performance monitoring and showed that cows were losing £250 (€325) per head on average. The programme has also delivered in gaining access to top advisers and consultants.

Furthermore, cattle housing that is available is old and significant investment would be required to modernise it, which they say couldn’t be justified in an environment of investing in the sheep flock and associated infrastructure.

Significant changes

The next major decision on the farm was in the breeding policy. Historically, the flock balanced between producing lambs for slaughter and replacements for the flock.

A decision was made to simplify the system by concentrating on producing lambs for slaughter with replacements purchased from known sources to reduce the risk of incorporating disease. This also paved the way for focusing on a maternal breed of ewe and matching them with terminal rams with high growth rates and good slaughter characteristics.

The flock is undergoing a period of transition with older Texel cross and Suffolk cross ewes being phased out and replaced with Aberfield x Improved Welsh ewe lambs. Ben explains that the Aberfield is a composite breed developed by Innovis (UK company specialising in sheep breeding technologies) from a nucleus flock using proven Bluefaced Leicester rams from recorded flocks and crossed with specific Texel breeding lines.

This breed ticks three main goals for their new flock – a lighter ewe with higher prolificacy and capable of performing in a forage-based system with Aberfield rams not excessively pushed and produced in such a system. When crossed with the Welsh ewes, they produce a hardy ewe with good maternal characteristics and large enough to rear twin lambs with good growth characteristics.

Table 1 details the scanning percentage and lamb losses from 2011 to 2016 and shows the continual improvement in litter size achieved. Note that an outbreak of enzootic abortion led to higher losses in 2012 and 2013.

Composite breeding is also utilised in terminal sire breeding with Abermax, a composite of Texel and Charollais genetics again produced by Innovis and Primera rams, which is also a terminal sire aimed at producing lambs for slaughter.

Another decision taken to improve the farm’s profitability was to lamb to grass with the lambing period changed to two defined periods from March to the end of April compared with the start of February in the past.

Teaser rams have been central to achieving a tight lambing spread and have been used since 2013. A tighter lambing spread has in turn provided benefits in better matching the nutritional demands of ewes in late pregnancy, reducing labour input by avoiding a drawn-out lambing spread and more straightforward management of lambs for worming, weaning drafting, etc, due to a more uniform age.

The reason for two periods remaining is to make the best use of available facilities with insufficient space present to lamb in one group. Despite the change, Ben says the drafting pattern has not been greatly altered with higher levels of performance attainable at a lower cost than in the past, where high levels of supplementary feeding were used to bring early-born lambs to slaughter.

Setting up the farm to achieve a goal of producing lambs from grazed grass and forage crops has been one of the greatest challenges for the farm. This is because the farm was not set up to operate as an intensive system with the focus of producing solely from pasture or forage. Fields were all permanent pasture with a low pH of 4.9 to 5.5 and soil fertility was poor.

Furthermore, he says infrastructure was poor with large fields and inadequate fencing preventing the farm practising the rotational grazing system they wanted.

Gradual changes

The farm’s infrastructure is being gradually improved with areas that will provide the greatest response targeted for fencing first. Ben says that improvements such as this require heavy investment and any schemes providing grant aid have been utilised over the last three years. The farm is now at a stage where the entire boundary is fenced, with work now turning towards internal boundaries. Maximum use is also being made of electric fencing as a lower cost alternative.

The other major area where improvements are being implemented is in improving the productivity of grassland. Some 530 tonnes of lime has been applied, lifting the pH from 4.9 to 5.5 to between 5.8 and 6.5. This is getting the soil working better and achieving a better response from crops to fertiliser application.

A reseeding programme is in place which is based on using fodder crops as break-crops. Swedes have been sown for the last four years to carry ewes and ewe lambs over the winter and, recently, the farm has experimented with grazing fodder beet in-situ.

Ben says that crop yield has been excellent with ewes grazing given a run-back and access to silage indoors due to inclement weather. Deferred grazing is also utilised on 30 acres with Ben commenting that he does not see the need to cut higher volumes of expensive silage when ewes can graze it in the field.

The reseeding programme is incorporating high-performing grasses, which include a mixture of high sugar grasses or crops for finishing lambs such as red clover, chicory and a plantain mix. This is providing good results with all lambs drafted in 2015 by the end of December.

Maximum use is made of new technologies and since introducing EID into the flock in 2013, all lambs are recorded at birth and weighed again at eight weeks of age to monitor performance. In 2015, lambs gained 340g to 350g, on average, until eight weeks of age. Weighing takes place more frequently after this, both as an aid to monitor performance and also to draft lambs at optimum weights.

The weaning date has moved back from 16 to 18 weeks of age to 12 to 13 weeks of age. At first, Ben says they were worried about earlier weaning having a negative effect on performance, but he explains being able to prioritise better quality grazing for lambs delivers better results than having lambs compete with ewes for grass. It has also provided an opportunity to assess what crops are delivering the best results post-weaning.

Once lambs hit 36kg liveweight, they are transferred on to a red clover pasture, which they say is working excellently in finishing lambs.

The average liveweight of lambs sold in 2015 was 40.92kg and with an average kill-out percentage of 48%, this delivered an average carcase weight of 19.96kg.

Performance boost

As well as lifting lamb performance, improving pasture quality is also benefiting the condition of ewes, which is contributing to a higher scanning rate by having ewes in optimum condition at breeding and lower lamb mortality.

It has also greatly affects the quality of forage saved and along with access to fodder crops and red clover, silage has significantly reduced concentrate supplementation.

Ben explains that, in 2015, a 21% cake (concentrate supplement) was formulated on request and while working out at a higher cost, savings were made by feeding less.

Twin-bearing ewes received up to 350g for the final three weeks of pregnancy, along with ad-lib access to a 50:50 mix of grass and red clover silage. This has dropped from just under 1kg when they initially took over the farm.

With silage quality continuing to improve, the focus is to bring down supplementary costs to a minimum. The plan once ewes are housed this spring is to feed up to 250g for the final three weeks of pregnancy with the protein content of cake increased to 34% to take account of lower volumes being fed and to ensure that protein intake is not limited in the final weeks of pregnancy.

Changes are delivering

The changes implemented are certainly having the desired effect. Some 1,000 lambs were produced in 2015, an increase of 255 head on 2014. This increased output by 9,675kg to 40,928kg or to 629.66kg/ha. Tougher market conditions reduced lamb price from an average sales value of £77.71/lamb in 2014 to £65.01 in 2015. However, 15kg extra liveweight output per ewe worth £11.31 in extra sales (sales of £103.20/ewe) helped, along with a growth in ewe numbers, which increased the farm’s gross margin by £276.59/ha to reach £1,000/ha.