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Having enough individual lambing pens is one of the greatest challenges around lambing, particularly if weather is unsuitable to get ewes and lambs outdoors quickly. Add in the possibility of over 70% of the flock lambing in the space of a few days and the scale of the task intensifies.
This was the environment at UCD Lyons Research Farm earlier this week. The sheep flock of about 300 ewes and 100 ewe lambs is one of four flocks participating in Sheep Ireland’s central progeny test programme, which allows the performance of different genetics to be tested in a commercial farm setting.
To remove as much environmental bias as possible, ewes are artificially inseminated to have lambs born in as compact a manner as possible.
While the compact nature of lambing presents some logistical challenges, according to Prof Tommy Boland it also presents an ideal opportunity to provide a teaching platform for the students who gain valuable lambing experience.
Over 400 secondary school students also passed through Lyons Research facility on Monday as part of Agri Aware’s network of farm walks. Last Monday was day 147 of gestation, which in a sheep farm’s diary is the day at which the most ewes are likely to lamb, meaning the students witnessed plenty of activity.
There were 28 ewes lambed from 8am Monday morning to 1pm, a further six in the next two hours while visiting and a total of 41 for the day.
Ideal conditions
As can be imagined, the intensity of lambing put pressure on space, even with the facility pre-empting high demand for individual lambing pens and having one pen in place for every five ewes lambing.
Another complication is additional information required to be collected for Sheep Ireland and research trials taking place. This includes a lamb birth weight, lambing assistance measure, mothering ability, milk yield and other related lambing data.
Pressure on lambing pens was relieved by Monday’s higher-than-normal temperatures providing a perfect opportunity to get ewes and lambs released outdoors.
Chief livestock officer Stephen Lott explained that, on average, ewes and lambs were spending 24 hours in an individual lambing pen and, depending on suitability, were either transferred to group pens for an extra period of time or released to grass.
“From the large pen into the mothering-up pen (individual lambing pen), we’re tagging the lambs at 12 hours, identifying (correlating ewe’s tag number with the lambs) and ringing them and by 24 hours we’re out to grass. The weather is ideal. If this week was wet, we’d be looking for extra space, we’d be holding ewes and lambs in the shed and disease pressure would be building.
“We will get about 30 ewes out of the shed today and, if weather keeps up, we’ll keep letting ewes out daily until Saturday or Sunday and hopefully by Sunday we’ll have about 95% of the shed lambed and about 85% of ewes and lambs out to grass,” he said.
Ewes are being turned outdoors to silage fields with good shelter in groups of 20 to 30. They will remain there until the end of the month, at which stage they will return to the main block and be grouped into larger grazing flocks.
The grazing area has received a bag of urea per acre, with silage ground receiving 1,500 gallons of slurry per acre earlier in the year. Grass supplies are described as excellent and, with weather improving, there will be no concentrates fed at grass to ewes or ewe hoggets rearing lambs.
Lambing performance
After a few lamb losses at the outset, Stephen says lambing is going smoothly, with ewe body condition helping to deliver vigorous lambs that are hitting the ground running.
“Ewes had access to the last of the forage rape crop from the start of November to the first week of January. This gave ewes a great boost coming into the shed and condition was easily maintained with good-quality silage (71 DMD, 10.8 MJ ME, 26% DM and 15% crude protein),” according to Stephen.
With this in mind, Tommy Boland explains that feeding in late pregnancy has been targeted to achieving the best balance of lambs being born at a favourable birth weight without leading to the birth of oversized lambs.
Triplet-bearing ewes received 0.9kg to 1kg of an 18% crude protein concentrate in the final two weeks of pregnancy, twins got 0.75kg and single-bearing ewes were introduced to 100g of soya bean three weeks out from lambing and increased to 150g in the final week.
This is to ensure ewes have sufficient colostrum to aid cross-fostering from triplet-bearing ewes with lambing in the mature ewe flock broken down as 78 singles, 143 twins, 62 triplets and one quad.
Ewe hoggets lamb first
In contrast to many other flocks, ewe hoggets lamb down the week before the mature flock. Stephen says that this works well for the flock.
“In some flocks, ewe hoggets lamb at the end when there is often less time invested and more risk of disease pressure. We synchronise the ewe lambs and are done with the majority of them before the main flock starts lambing. These animals are primed to take advantage of the best-quality grass growth in May and have a longer recovery time to the next season’s breeding,” says Stephen.
Ewe hoggets spend a couple of days in group pens post-lambing, with additional space freed up by releasing repeat breeders to grass while the main flock is lambing.
These ewes will be brought back indoors for lambing, with ewe hoggets allowed one repeat cycle. All ewe hoggets have now been released to grass, with twin-suckling ewes monitored to ensure they are fit to rear two lambs.
In pictures: smaller entry and steady sheep prices in Carndonagh
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