Practical management at tupping has a beneficial impact on both the profitability and practicalities at lambing. Effective and reliable marking lets you know which ewes have been tupped, by which ram and when!
The nutrition of the ewe is key in achieving an optimum body condition score (BCS) at tupping, ensuring high levels of fertility, and a maximum lamb crop next season. It can take up to 6 weeks to increase a ewes BCS by one point, therefore it is important to act sooner rather than later.
If your lambs are struggling with low-quality forage or limited grazing options, you should consider creep feeding your lambs. Creep feeding provides supplemental nutrition to lambs while they are still nursing.
For those with well-managed grazing systems and access to plentiful grass, creep feeding may not be required. However, to hit daily live weight gain (DLWG) targets and meet market requirements, reliance on low-quality forage or limited grazing won’t deliver the desired results, and it will pay to feed creep feed to bolster performance.
One in five sheep producers are still cross fostering triplet lambs onto single-bearing ewes and about 30% are continuing to bottle feed orphans. This is despite the significant extra labour required to carry out both traditional rearing practices.
Elevated energy demands placed on pregnant ewes in late gestation mean sheep can lose condition and suffer from twin lamb disease. This produces ketones as fat reserves are used as an energy source as opposed to glucose in the bloodstream.
The importance of balancing energy and protein requirements in lamb diets throughout growth cannot be understated. The same principles should be applied to ensure vitamins and minerals are balanced responsibly, enabling optimum utilisation of the total diet.
Each trace mineral has a different role to play in the body, and although the requirements may seem small in quantity, they are vital to the health and performance of all animals.
Not all lamb milk replacements are the same. Following colostrum feeding, the choice of a lamb milk replacer for artificially reared lambs is an important consideration. A digestible, carefully formulated milk replacer can help lambs to achieve their full growth potential to develop into strong, robust lambs which continue to perform.
Beef and Sheep manager, Bryn Hughes advises farmers to make informed adjustments to their ewe management practices for greater success during the lambing season.
Accurately measuring and recording the weight of lambs plays a vital role in monitoring flock performance. This blog aims to highlight the importance of weighing lambs, discussing the benefits it brings to the overall health, management, and profitability of a sheep flock.
Rearing surplus lambs can be a difficult task during the lambing season, and the decision to foster onto a ewe or artificially rear the lambs will depend on their physical condition.
