It’s the final countdown for the rams

THE RAMS have only 10 days left before they will be removed from all the ewes and ewe-lambs. We picked off any ewes that were raddle-marked last week. These ewes will be kept out on grass until early January as they will be last lambing in April.

All the other ewes that have conceived to AI will be housed by the middle of December and scanned after Christmas. We should have enough grass for another two weeks. To utilise the grass we have, we are dividing the fields to allow three days grass to the ewes and then move on to a new section. We are using a back fence so they do not go back over what has already been eaten.

The grass we are eating now is a heavy cover so the area they get is small and if the ground gets wetter we may change to moving them every day.

More work but we will get better utilisation of grass and less poaching of the ground. Now that the ewes are more than six weeks in-lamb we can push them to eat out these heavy covers and not have much effect on ewe condition or embryo loss.

We have all the fields that had the lightest covers of grass on them grazed off now and closed up until next spring. We have plenty of silage to feed for the winter but we, like a lot of other farmers are tight on the amount of straw we have for bedding.

With a decrease in the area of cereal crops grown and very difficult weather to save what straw was available we may have to think again at how we house our ewes or may have to come up with some other way of keeping them outside for longer.

Maybe slats could be looked at again or growing fodder-beet to extend the ewe grazing season.

Lamb sales continue every two weeks with about 80pc sold. We go through the lambs that are on the fodder-rape on a Tuesday, pick off what is fit to sell and leave them in a grass field until the evening before they are going to the factory.

We put them inside on plenty of straw for the night and are not having any problems with dirty lambs when killed the day after.

Our ewe-lambs are the ones causing us problems. We have some of them with sore eyes.

As they are away on grass with very little handling facilities available, we are just catching the infected ones, treating them with an eye ointment and giving them a shot of long acting oxytetracycline. They get 6ml each. It is an on-going problem for the last two weeks.

Any ewe lambs treated are marked and the response has been mixed. Some are showing a good improvement but a few that were treated are still partly blind.

Pink eye intends to occur as an out-break in a flock. The organism is possibly introduced by the purchase of sheep. The rams we have with these ewe-lambs were purchased this year. Ideally the infected ones should be isolated from the main flock.

We will be removing the rams from these ewe-lambs in two weeks, we will remove and treat any infected ones that day. For now we will treat any that show signs of weepy eyes.

Pink eye is a disease that is usually self-limiting and the majority of effected animals will clear up without treatment usually in a week to 10 days, so hopefully the worst will be over by the time we get to gather them up.

LIKE A LOT OF FARMERS WE ARE TIGHT ON STRAW FOR BEDDING

John Large farms at Gortnahoe, Co Tipperary.