It's been an busy few days here on the farm. As the end of the year approaches, it is time for sorting out the last of the lambs for slaughter and few ewes and rams have not come through the breeding season so well.

There is really no reason, especially after the exceptional grass growing season we have had, that ewes should be still in poor order. At this time of the year, if you have exhausted all avenues in trying to diagnose and remedy the situation, they will probably not do the job you want them to through to lambing and beyond, so it is sometimes as well to cash them in.

We have been feeding the tale end of the lambs for the last three weeks, mostly ewe lamb’s lambs, and on Saturday we went through them to see what was fit for the factory. This coincided with our Lamb Producer Group annual dinner in Slane that evening.

Lamb producer group

The Boyne Valley group is nearly 30 years in existence and while numbers did decrease during 2000 and 2012, I am glad to report that membership and lamb throughput has increased notably in the last two years.

Every year we hold a live to dead demonstration for group members. Small prizes are presented at the annual dinner and a ICM representative gives a brief synopsis on the results. Each member is asked to put lambs forward, which are then weighed and judged alive by an Irish Country Meats procurement officer & their grader. They are then slaughtered and judged on the hook. It is an invaluable day as it highlights the difference between lambs that may all look similar alive but vary greatly in carcase form.

Two things stood out, a kill out difference of over 10% and a monetary difference of €20 between the lambs that hit the specifications and those who were either side of the ideal export type lamb the market requires. This shows the extra money that is available for free by trying to draft your lambs correctly and an essential part of that is having a weighing scales.

Weighing

It is surprising so many sheep farmers don’t have a scales. As a sheep farmer, not having a weighing scales is like a bricklayer going to work without a spirit level. Now not every lamb will hit the target, you will have the butty ewe lamb and the big stag of a ram lamb that no matter what you do, they will still be outside the parameters of gaining the top money.

I am glad to report that our group of lambs that were drafted on Saturday and slaughtered on Tuesday conformed to my theory that not every lamb, can or ever will, return the top dollar; they were a mixed bag. I suppose that’s what keeps us going, that every year end we can look forward to the next year and hope to produce a better product for the consumer which as farmers is what one of our aims should be.

*Ronan Delany runs a sheep and beef enterprise with a small herd of pedigree Belted Galloway cattle at Dunshaughlin, Meath. You can follow him on Twitter @gaulstownfarms.