The Teagasc sheep knowledge transfer department is asking farmers to complete a short survey on labour.

Sheep farming, Teagasc said, can be a very labour-intensive enterprise and this survey aims to identify the main challenges, areas for improvement and to influence future policy.

Along with pinpointing where time is being spent, the survey aims to quantify sheep enterprise scale, intensity, production system and the facilities available, with the latter focusing on housing, grazing infrastructure and the lambing shed.

Previous studies have shown that efficient sheep farmers have really good handling and housing facilities and this survey aims to identify not only the gaps that exist at farm level, but also to highlight areas for improvement that will make sheep farming a more labour-efficient system in the future.

Input

Farmers will be asked to quantify labour input over the production year. Light will also be shed on time inputted to more labour-intensive periods such as lambing, a period of time which a previous Teagasc study showed accounted for 20% of the annual labour load on sheep farms.

The survey, which is totally anonymous, takes 10 to 12 minutes to complete and is available in both online and hardcopy formats, the latter available from your local Teagasc adviser.

Sheep specialist at Teagasc Damian Costello said: “There is lots of work with sheep, yet there’s loads of room for improvement on many sheep farms in terms of reducing labour.

"Our survey aims to identify some of the labour challenges - and there are lots of them - and where time is being spent on sheep farms.”

Click here to complete the survey.