Talking points at Tullamore Farm sheep stand

Last week’s Tullamore Farm National Suckler and Sheep Open Day generated lots of good discussion with a number of the same questions cropping up on numerous occasions. Some of the discussions surrounding the hot topics are summarised below.

Enzootic abortion

The farm’s health plan and biosecurity policy includes vaccination for enzootic abortion.

Many farmers at the event also vaccinating for enzootic abortion are concerned following recent announcements regarding supply issues with the two vaccines available.

There is no positive news as yet. It looks like it could be quarter four when Enzovax, manufactured by MSD Animal Health, is back in stock.

Ceva, manufacturer of Cevac Chlamydia, is still working to restore supply as soon as possible. The company has previously stated that the vaccine will be unavailable in July and August with no further updates at this point in time.

Killout in lambs

The last batch of lambs drafted in Tullamore Farm achieved a poorer and much more variable killout. As detailed in Table 1, the killout reduced by almost 2% on the previous batch drafted just eight days earlier. The average killout of 44.6% hides the variability with lambs in the batch killing from as low as 41.1% to as high as 50.2%.

First-cross ram lambs exhibiting a high degree of maternal genetics killed from 41.1% to 45%, with ewe lambs and Charollais-cross lambs bred from Texel x Mule-cross and Suffolk x Mule-cross ewes killing out from 45% to 48% in the main with three lambs above this range.

Farmers in attendance reported a similar situation with keen interest in finishing plans for the remainder of the season.

Lambs were weighed again on Tuesday by Teagasc’s Bríd McClearn and Martin Warde under the EU Techcare project with lambs weighing 40.8kg on average. Another 38 lambs were selected for slaughter on Thursday.

Ram lambs have been separated from ewe lambs and will be offered concentrate supplementation of 0.3kg per day. Concentrates will be a standard high-energy low-protein nut or ration. Ewe lambs will receive no concentrates in the short-term.

Rams versus wethers

The question of Tullamore Farm castrating a percentage of lambs at birth to assess the performance of castrates versus ram lambs was brought up by about four to five groups.

The farm knows from research that there is the potential for higher performance from ram lambs but of significant interest from those querying the production system is whether lambs would achieve a higher killout and finish easier without concentrates. This is something the farm had initially planned to do in 2024 but pushed out to 2025 given the challenging weather at lambing.

Lambs have received one dose to date – a benzimidazole-based product for nematodirus. The need to dose lambs for worms is based on faecal egg counts (FEC). A FEC was carried out as part of the Techcare visit on 19 July and returned a count of 200 eggs per gramme. A further egg count was taken on Tuesday and this will determine the need to treat.

Easycare genetics

There is no doubting that there was firm interest in Easycare genetics. Some of this interest was passing interest about the breed and the type of progeny produced when crossed with continental sires, while there was also concrete interest from other farmers who will be watching how the breed performs.

The poor price of wool is helping to generate extra interest while there is intrigue as to the potential saving in terms of flystrike prevention and any other management practices from not having wool present.