Pre-season preparation is the key to minimising problems, reducing losses and achieving a higher lamb yield per ewe, which eventually will lead to improved daily liveweight gain and increased margins.
Lambs should receive colostrum as soon after birth as possible – ultimately within the first 6 hours. Lambs are born with a permeable gut wall to allow for the absorption of large antibody molecules.
During scanning, the results will provide an initial indication of how many lambs are likely to need fostering or artificially rearing. Before lambing starts preparing a carefully planned rearing protocol will be time well spent, since well grown artificially reared lambs will leave an acceptable margin that can be considered a worthy additional income stream.
It’s never too early to be thinking about winter ewe feeding.
Growing and utilising home-grown forage is key to maximising profitability of sheep enterprises. It is important to consider the size of your flock versus the amount of forage available.
Are your lambs chewing on the teats of your ad-lib milk feeders? Here are a few tricks you can try this lambing season.
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Managing your ewes effectively in the last eight weeks before lambing is one of the most important stages in the sheep calendar, says experienced sheep consultant Kate Phillips. If things go wrong at this stage the effects will be noticed in the following areas, lamb birth-weight could be low, lamb losses high, colostrum is poor in quality and supplies are below average poor and subsequent lamb growth below target. Thus ensuring the health of the ewe is vitally important.
During late pregnancy a ewe’s immune system becomes weakened, therefore the worm burden that is usually kept subdued can flourish and an increased number of worm eggs can be released onto the pasture.
When, how and how much are frequent queries when it comes to feeding milk replacer to lambs. Getting this right can be the key to raising healthy, profitable lambs.
