We got the last of the scanning finished earlier this month. I am a lot happier this year, given the number of barren ewes from the central progeny test (CPT) part of the flock has reduced considerably from what it had been the last few years. Overall, the flock has scanned with 6% empty and a crop of 2.1 lambs per ewe that’s in-lamb.

The weather for the last week of the month has also helped with drying out the fields, although as I walked the farm last week, I calculated that about 40% isn’t dry enough to take the tractor and fertiliser spreader on yet.

The grass covers across the farm are starting to improve. I hope to start taking grass measurements on a more regular basis this month. I will also take the opportunity with any good ground conditions to get some slurry spread on the farm from a neighbouring pig unit.

This will be targeted at fields with a need for extra P and K from the latest soil samples, as well as any fields that had silage taken from them last summer. I plan on switching to protected urea this year, in an attempt to do my part for the environment. I will start spreading this on a phased basis across the farm, starting with the fields that I’m planning on getting stock out to first. I will be spreading 23 units of nitrogen per acre from the second week of February, depending on the weather conditions.

Booster

We have started to administer the clostridial booster to the mature ewes. This is done on a phased basis, according to when the ewes are due to lamb. Ideally, they should be done four to six weeks out from due date to give enough time for the ewes to produce sufficient anti-bodies for passive immunisation of lambs through their colostrum.

We will clean out some of the pens in the shed over the next few weeks prior to lambing.

As the ewes go through the handling unit, we will put them through the footbath. Any ewes that are lame will be marked and treated. I will move all these ewes into a different pen, so as to help to reduce exposure to the other ewes in the shed.

Any ewes that are still lame after lambing will be run separately until recovered, and those that don’t will be removed from the system. I will also take the opportunity to identify ewes that are not in optimum body condition score and pen them together to receive extra feeding, in order to prevent any additional losses in body condition score prior to lambing.

Meal

At present, the ewes carrying three or more lambs are receiving meal. They will be built up gradually over the coming weeks to approximately 0.6kg of meal per head by the time of lambing.

Usually, this would be built up to 1kg and divided into two feeds per day once feeding levels go over 0.5kg per head to reduce any chance of digestive upset in the ewes.

However, this year I am feeding all the ewes a TMR mix with 78DMD silage and soya, meaning the triplet, quad and any thin couple-bearing ewes are all that require additional supplement.

I am hoping this way of feeding will reduce stress on both the animals and myself at feeding time, as well as reducing shoving around the feeding barrier, as there will always be a consistent feed available to the ewes. This level of feeding should also provide the singles with sufficient levels of protein to have enough milk to rear foster lambs from the ewes. This, in return, will hopefully reduce my workload in rearing pet lambs.