Farmer Writes: Getting lamb drafting weight correct

As a new year begins, I like to look back over how things have gone in the previous 12 months. Part of this is to take a closer look at my sales for the year and see how business has been and if I can improve my profits in the year to come.

One thought that struck me lately was how getting lamb drafting weights correct is crucial.

I took a random sales docket of 151 lambs which were bang on spec at the time of sale earlier in year. There was 26.27kg of free meat on this load of lambs, with very few lambs excessively heavy. It equated to 0.17kg excess per lamb, or 80c free meat per lamb at the time.

On their own, this may not appear much, but it was approximately €120 for the load – more than an entire lamb for free.

When you think of this on a larger scale, there are around 2.5m sheep slaughtered on average each year in Ireland and this equates to somewhere in the region of €2m that we are giving to the factories for nothing.

Farmers have been in uproar at a severance package for the former IFA general secretary for this same sum, yet we still give away so much of our money without thought.

The meat produced on our farms comes at a cost to us. I can’t count the amount of times that I’ve been in the factory lairage and witnessed stock in for slaughter that should have been slaughtered a number of weeks previous.

Have we not paid for it in terms of fertiliser, labour, vet and feed imports, some of which were unnecessary as we could have drafted lambs sooner in a more economic fashion?

Sometimes less on the cheque we receive from the factory will equate to more money in our own pockets in the long run.

Talking figures and profitability, another important factor is litter size and management.

With the first cycle of ewes mated now scanned, I have divided these up in groups according to litter size. This helps me cut down on feed costs, as not all ewes will require an extended feeding regime prior to lambing.

I have introduced 300g of meal to my triplet-bearing ewes this week, along with any twin-bearing ewes which have a less than ideal condition score.

The remaining couples will be introduced to meal six to eight weeks prior to lambing, with singles introduced four weeks out, as I want to cross foster as many of the surplus lambs as possible on to them. Having a good supply of milk is essential for this.

Scanning results

Figure 1 displays the scanning results of the first 17 days of breeding. I am very pleased with this result, which includes the ewes that were artificially inseminated.

These ewes scanned 1.93 lambs per ewe to the ram, or with empties removed they have nearly hit the magic number of two, with a litter size of 1.99.

As this doesn’t include the repeats, these figures are due to change when scanning is completed in a fortnight’s time.