Operating at a high stocking rate of 450 ewes on his 70-acre farm in Castlederg, Tyrone, Isaac Crilly is firmly focused on producing a functional, maternal crossbred ewe. There is no room for underperforming animals and a strong focus is placed on selecting replacements to bring improved milk yield and litter size into the flock.

There is less focus on improving carcase traits in breeding ewes. Isaac’s justification is straightforward – improving conformation from an R to a U grade lamb is worth £2 (€2.40) extra per lamb, but an additional 0.1% lambs weaned per ewe is worth approximately £8 (€10) at today’s prices.

Breeding

Ewes are bred from Belclare and New Zealand Suffolk rams. The Belclare brings prolificacy into the breeding pool and the New Zealand Suffolk brings growth rate, lambing ease and reduced worm burdens.

Replacements are bred as ewe lambs, crossed with either a New Zealand Suffolk and a crossbred New Zealand Suffolk X Texel.

Ewes not suited to breeding replacements are crossed with a Meatlinc ram which is a fivebreed terminal composite.

Isaac only wants naturally reared sheep and will not buy rams that are overfed on meals. Rams are selected based on performance figures (estimated breeding values) and a good functional physical appearance.

Ewes that produce twin lambs and lambs with minimal assistance are recorded at lambing by ear notching. This allows replacements to be selected from the best ewes and on the animal’s own performance.

Working as a commercial partner in research programmes run by AFBI has led to Isaac breeding easier care sheep. As a result, lambing interventions have reduced from 40% to 5% over the past decade.

Nutrition

Winter feeding of in-lamb ewes is where Isaac’s system differs to other sheep farms. As Isaac operates a sheep-only system, he does not make silage. Instead, he prefers to use all of his land for carrying ewes.

After running out of silage six years ago, he decided to feed a combination of straw and concentrates to ewes before lambing to bridge the fodder gap.

Having worked well, Isaac decided to use a straw and concentrate diet throughout the winter as the cost of producing silage and loss of land from the grazing block were less economical.

In 2013, ewes were housed in mid-December and fed soya hulls and wheat straw daily. From start to finish, Isaac can feed 450 to 500 ewes within 40 minutes and as there is no machinery required, there are no added fixed costs that are often overlooked on farms feeding silage.

For the feeding system to work, the body condition score must be at least 3.5 at housing to allow a reduction down to 3.0 at lambing in March.

Soya bean is introduced gradually and increased closer to lambing. Ewes are fed 1kg/head/day of ration, with feed costs running from £0.19/day (22c/day) after housing increasing to £0.32/day (37c/day) closer to lambing.

Mineral supplementation is crucial in Isaac’s system. Blood samples have shown that ewes are deficient in selenium, so a drench is provided at grass and powdered minerals are fed indoors. The diet is balanced to ewe condition and scanning results and Isaac seeks advice on the diet annually from his farm adviser.

Comparison

In a traditional silage-based wintering system, concentrate feeding levels are dependent on silage quality. Silage should be analysed as there is no point in feeding concentrates based on a guess.

Ewes offered poor silage (62 DMD or lower) need 33% more silage to supply the same amount of energy as good silage (70 DMD or better).

Over a six-week period, the good silage requires an additional 12kg/ewe of concentrates to meet a twin-bearing ewe’s nutritional demand, while on the poor silage, 28kg/ewe is required.

At a cost of €270/tonne, the additional concentrates amounts to an increase of 10c/day in feeding costs. A typical grass silage and concentrate diet costs between £0.20 and £0.30/day (22c to 35c/day) excluding diesel costs.

Flock performance

Isaac benchmarks the farm annually through CAFRE. In 2013, lamb sales averaged 1.58 lambs/ewe (including lambs produced from 100 ewe lambs) with output per ewe in 2013 averaging £112 (€131/ewe). Concentrates fed averaged 209kg/ewe – this represented an increase of 38kg/ewe as a result of the fodder crisis.

Variable costs increased by £20/ewe (€22) with the additional feeding leaving a gross margin (GM) of £29/ewe (€34), which is £20/ewe less than the average farm. Despite the lower GM/ewe, the GM/ha was £548 (€641) in 2013, which is £170/ha (€199) more than the average farm due to the high stocking rate in 2013 at 19 ewes/ha (seven ewes/acre).