Sheep management: lambing tips, supplementing early lambers and soil sampling

Lambing tips: This week’s sheep feature summarises a number of practical lambing tips delivered at last week’s Teagasc lambing webinar. A number of other practical measures were outlined including the marking of ewes and lambs to facilitate quick identification at a later date.

Tips delivered by Teagasc sheep specialist Damian Costello include marking single-suckling and twin-suckling ewes/lambs with a different spray colour so that you can quickly see if lambs are following a ewe once at grass. Lambs should be marked on the same side as ewes.

Lambs which have been fostered onto ewes regularly give subsequent problems.

Denoting that lambs have been fostered by marking with an ‘F’ alongside their number will allow quick identification. For outdoor flocks applying numbers to ewes in advance will mean that only lambs need to be numbered. The webinar can be viewed at www.teagasc.ie/letstalksheep.

Soil sampling: A spread in this week’s Focus on fertilisers discusses fertiliser allowances. Nitrogen fertiliser allowances are not an issue for the majority of sheep farmers, but phosphorus (P) limits are much more restrictive.

The best hope of having a higher phosphorus allowance is to have eligible soil tests. For nitrates purposes, soil samples will be valid for four years and the maximum area is 5ha per sample.

Since January 2023, soil tests are compulsory for farms with a grassland stocking rate above 130kg organic N/ha and for all sown arable lands. A P index of 4 must be assumed in the absence of soil samples for farms stocked over 130kg N/ha and index 3 for farms with a grassland stocking rate of less than 130kg organic N/ha and without soil samples.

While on the topic, an information note on the fifth nitrates action programme relating to organic matter determination outlines that peat soils are defined on the Teagasc-EPA indicative soils map.

It states that where a holding does not accept the soil as being peat, a soil test to determine organic matter content is required and this soil analysis must be carried out by an accredited laboratory.

This may be an option for farmers who have lands categorised under the new GAEC 2 – governing the protection of wetland and peatland. This is a question that has cropped up regularly since last week’s announcement but there is no further detail on the specifics of this GAEC.

Supplementing ewes: The requirement to supplement freshly lambed ewes and their lambs that have been turned outdoors will depend on a number of factors including grass supply, ewe condition, grass dry matter (DM) and weather. Technically, a plentiful supply (4cm to 5cm plus) of grass will satisfy the nutritional demands of a ewe in early lactation.

However, where weather is poor and utilisation is challenging or the grass DM is low, there will be a benefit in supplementing ewes in the short term with concentrates slowing down the rate of grass digestion and boosting nutritional intake.

This is especially true for twin-suckling ewes with a small volume of 0.3kg to 0.6kg sufficient. Where ewes are supplemented short-term indoors then 1kg to 1.2kg concentrates will be required with average-quality 68 to 70% DMD silage, rising to 1.4kg to 1.5kg for thin ewes. The rates for single-suckling ewes are 0.3kg to 0.5kg and 0.6kg to 0.9kg, respectively.