Weather woes

This week’s main sheep feature on page 31 discusses trying to get the grazing season back on track. Unfortunately, since the feature was written earlier this week, the weather forecast has once again become uncertain with a mixed outlook for the week ahead.

The only option available to farmers is to utilise whatever small opportunities that may arise to try and progress the tasks discussed in the feature.

Reducing demand for grass is another option that may work to build grass supplies.

Options available include offering replacement hoggets access to silage/hay, where applicable, and possibly early weaning of lambs.

The latter is an option where earlier born lambs are being creep fed, and ewes are competing with lambs for scarce grass supplies.

The grass intake of lambs increases significantly from six weeks of age onwards, rising from 0.3kg DM/head daily to 0.5kg DM/ha daily in weeks seven and eight, followed by another significant increase to 0.7kg DM daily at nine to 10 weeks of age.

At the same time, ewe milk yield is also declining, creating an opportunity for some to target the best-quality grass to lambs and transfer ewes on to silage/hay.

Lambs can be weaned where they are consuming at least 250g/day concentrates on three consecutive days. Early weaning also opens up the opportunity of feeding lambs a restricted level of concentrates.

Marketing cull ewes

The trade for cull ewes has strengthened considerably in recent weeks, with many marts experiencing a significant lift in price for large-framed and top-quality fleshed ewes over the last week.

Where you have such ewes to sell it is worth at least weighing up your options. Decisions should take into account the type of ewe on hand, the price offered by the factory and also the paid carcase weight limit, which typically ranges from 40kg to 46kg carcase weight.

Artificially rearing lambs

Costs can quickly accumulate with lambs reared artificially if volumes of milk replacer are not kept in check. This can be achieved by taking steps to reduce the volume of milk replacer fed, including weaning lambs in a timely manner.

Reducing the temperature of milk offered to lambs from 28-30°C back to 18-20°C after 10 days and a further reduction back to the environmental temperature (cold water from a tap) will significantly reduce volumes fed.

The benefit of moving lambs to cold milk is that it will encourage lambs to consume higher quantities of concentrates and limit the milk intake to approximately 400g daily over the last two week period, while if lambs are left consuming warm milk their intake will be in the region of 600g daily.

Weaning should take place at around five weeks of age and at this stage lambs should be consuming at least 250g of concentrates on three consecutive days and weigh at least 9kg liveweight.

It is critical that lambs have access to water even if intakes are initially low. It is also useful to offer lambs access to hay/silage/straw to help aid rumen development.

The next important decision that needs to be made is whether to retain lambs indoors and finish on an intensive diet or turn outdoors and supplement with concentrates until lambs would normally be weaned onto grass.