Breeding and finishing lambs in Roscommon

John Brooks’ farm in Taughmaconnell, Roscommon was the venue for the recent farm walk organised by Teagasc, Kepak and the QualEUtex group. The family farm runs the Racepark Texel and Suffolk pedigree flocks, which total around 160 ewes, alongside a commercial sheep flock of 400 ewes and 100 yearling lambing hoggets and a 120-head dairy calf-to-beef enterprise.

Land type on the farm can be best described as dry loam soils with limestone rock not far from the surface in some areas. Like other holdings in the area, the 100ha farm is fragmented and is split in five main divisions. While this complicates management, running a few different enterprises does go some way in slightly alleviating the pressure of transporting animals from one block to the next.

Pedigree enterprises

The Texel and Suffolk flocks are long-standing enterprises on the farm and John says they developed from keen interest in pedigree breeding which is spread across all the family.

“If it was down to pure economics and a simplified system, you could probably question the pedigree flocks. However, my wife Bernadette and mother Ellen have always shown a strong interest in this side of the farm and our four children – Isabel (10), twins Michael and Rachel (9) and Jack (8), have also become interested in pedigree sheep and showing and are a really good help. While there is a fair bit of work in showing and getting sheep ready for sales, it is worthwhile and rewarding and a great interest for the kids to get involved in.”

The Suffolk ewes lamb in January and February with a focus in the breed of having stronger lambs available for sale. Texel ewes lamb in February mainly with a small percentage of repeats sometimes running over into March.

Both enterprises are run separate with sales balanced between society sales and direct sales off the farm with a number of repeat customers helping to underpin demand.

Commercial flock

At the farm walk, Teagasc adviser James Kelly outlined the commercial flock enterprise. Ewes are stocked at 10.3ewes/ha (or over 4ewes/acre) with the farm operating a closed-flock policy with the exception of stock rams and select females entering the pedigree flocks.

The 400-ewe mature flock has lambed for the last few years from 10-12 March onwards with a high percentage of ewes lambing in a tight three-week period. This gives a quieter period of a week to 10 days before yearling commercial hoggets start to lamb. Breeding in the ewe lamb flock is maintained tight at three to four weeks to prevent a drawn out lambing period.

Performance records detailed by James are impressive with a barren rate of just 3% in the mature ewe flock in 2016/2017 and a scanning rate of 1.97 lambs per ewe joined to rams. The 100 ewe lambs achieved a conception rate of 85% with a scanning rate for those in lamb of 1.5 lambs in 2016/2017.

John says that performance and inputs in the commercial flock has actually been reduced in recent years and is now more manageable.

“When I was younger, I was farming more intensively. There was upwards of 650 to 700 ewes with lambing taking place earlier, a higher scanning rate and more work feeding meal post lambing. I remember one year we had 112 triplet bearing ewes and 12 quads. The workload was intense and something had to give. I tweaked the breeding policy from targeting well over two lambs per ewe and am now happy if we are scanning 1.9 lambs. We still get good performance I think, with less mortality and come in somewhere over 1.6 lambs weaned per ewe.”

The breeding policy on the farm is a three-way mix with Suffolk, Texel and Bluefaced Leicester genetics. A Bluefaced Leicester ram is mated with the Suffolk by Texel cross ewes to give a speckle-faced ewe lamb with plenty of length while Suffolk and Texel genetics add improved conformation into the mix.

Ewes lamb indoor and once turned outdoor supplementary feeding ceases. There is a strong focus on grassland management with the majority of lambs finished on a grass-based diet with meal feeding introduced in October to finish a small percentage of tail-end lambs.

Tweaking the system

John is considering pulling next year’s lambing date back around 10 days to the start of March. The thinking behind it is to have more lambs finished early in the year when prices have tended to be higher in the last two years while also benefiting from a market boost ahead of the Muslim festival Eid al-Adha.

“I think there is possibly scope to change the lambing date without having to change the system too much. The last thing I want is to move too early and end up short of grass and having to feed meal post lambing. It will take a bit more planning in having more ground closed up earlier this autumn but I think there is potential to do so.”

The idea of feeding some meal to lambs earlier in the season is also being considered with an aim of getting more lambs away earlier while also improving slaughter performance. The latter comes on the back of the farm being a member of the QualEUtex Lamb Producer Group which pays a 30c/kg bonus over the base price on U-grade lambs and a 35c/kg bonus on E grade lambs.

“The QualEUtex bonus of 30c/kg on U grade lambs puts an additional €6 to €7 on the table for lambs hitting the required specifications. A good percentage of the Texel and Suffolk sired lambs are hitting this target but I could increase this significantly by improving slaughter performance. We will have to weigh it up in an overall context of meal costs and the benefit of possibly having lambs drafted for sale earlier”.

Beef enterprise

The beef enterprise is also at a crossroads. Traditionally the farm operated a suckler enterprise of about 40 cows but this reduced to the current figure of 10 suckler cows in line with a growing dairy calf-to-beef enterprise. While this worked well John says variable calf quality, lower performance and tight margins is leading to a reassessment of the system.

“The calf-to-beef enterprise worked pretty well with the sheep enterprise. It was a job I liked and we had the farm set-up to manage and rear about 120 calves with feeding taking about 35 minutes morning and evening. In the last few years however, it has been harder to get good quality calves with falling carcase weights putting pressure on the economics of the system. It doesn’t help that I am working with a March- and April-born calf but buying calves earlier in the year isn’t realistic given the labour requirement with lambing and feeding in the sheep flocks.”

The most likely move is reverting to a weanling or store-to-beef enterprise, purchasing continental cattle.

“One of the biggest issues with the dairy beef was the poor finishing performance of animals and the response to feeding. Margins will also be tight purchasing continental cattle but performance should be better and is something I have a few more months to consider and make a final decision on.”