Finishing budgets

Buyer appetite for store lambs is being boosted by recent increases in deadweight lamb prices and ongoing reports of fewer lamb numbers on farms. If prices continue on an upward trajectory, then lambs have the potential of leaving a margin. The scale of the margin will be heavily influenced by finishing costs.

With this in mind, it is important to complete finishing budgets to help identify the most appropriate type of lamb to suit your farm’s resources.

For example, there is no point in purchasing a light lamb to lower the purchase cost if you are aiming to finish off limited grass supplies in a short period of time. The Teagasc store lamb calculator is a valuable tool.

Experience from Teagasc lamb finishing trials in recent years shows lowland terminal sired lambs on good-quality grass gaining in the region of 115g daily in October/November, reducing to 50g daily in December/January.

The performance of hill bred lambs on good-quality grass was in the region of 60g daily during October/November.

These are average figures and performance will be heavily influenced by grass quality/quantity and utilisation. The performance of lighter lambs was higher in some of the Teagasc findings, likely owing to compensatory growth.

In one trial the performance of hill lambs was boosted to 100g daily in October and November through supplementing lambs with 300g concentrates daily.

Where lambs were finished intensively indoors, typical performance was in the region of 200g daily for light Scottish Blackfaced lambs and 230g to 280g for light and medium weight Texel x Scottish Blackfaced lambs.

This increased to 218g for Scottish Blackfaced wether lambs, and 255g for ram lambs while Texel x Blackfaced wether lambs gained 315g daily and ram lambs 364g daily demonstrating the benefit of letting lambs develop a good frame where possible before finishing.

N and P statements

Nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) statements were updated this week on a farmer’s agfood.ie account. As detailed on page 71, the N and P statements only account for excretion rates for bovines on the farm.

Excretion rates for sheep are typically taken from the annual sheep census declaration.

Where such figures are not an accurate reflection of stock numbers and nitrogen levels are close to nitrates limits, then monthly sheep figures can be used to give a more accurate annual figure. These will need to be detailed and furnished to the Department in the case of breaches occurring.

The annual excretion rate for a lowland ewe and her lambs is 13kg N and 2kg P, while a mountain ewe and her lambs is 7kg N and 1kg P. Lowland hoggets have an excretion rate of 6kg N and 1kg P, and mountain hoggets 4kg N and 0.6kg P.

Farmers operating temporary grazing agreements that want to gain credit to reduce the volume of N and P produced, while grazing on another farm must submit a Record 4 form to the Department’s Nitrates section.

NSWS records

The Department of Agriculture is encouraging farmers who received requests to submit records for administrative checks as part of the National Sheep Welfare Scheme (NSWS) to submit their scheme action record sheets now.

Any supporting documentation for shearing, vaccines etc should also be furnished, along with ensuring that the relevant records are fully completed.