Synchronised lambing season ensures we have no labour issues

THREE weeks from today we will be in the middle of our busiest week of lambing at Lyons farm.

This year I expect things will be a little more hectic than recent years.

We have a large percentage of animals in the flock lambing for the first time, either as hoggets or ewe lambs. This results from the recent change in breed structure within the flock.

Additionally we have conception rates to the synchronised oestrus of 90pc and 70 pc respectively in the ewe and ewe lamb flocks, which puts extra pressure on the system for a few days.

We are in the lucky situation in Lyons of not having any labour issues.

We have dozens of students every year who volunteer to assist with the lambing work.

There are many reasons why we opt for synchronised breeding. One of the main ones is to condense as much of the lambing activity as possible into the first week of mid-term for the undergraduate students from Belfield. This gives the students a lot of exposure over a compact period of time, and allows us a plentiful supply of labour.

Boosters

All animals in the flock are now enrolled in a dual abortion vaccination program for toxoplasmosis and enzootic abortion.

They also all received booster treatments as part of the clostridia vaccination programme two weeks ago.

Silage quality is good at Lyons again this year, and the ewes are on 72 DMD silage.

The single-bearing ewes were on restricted forage intake until recently, but as we are depending on these ewes taking a foster lamb we will introduce 150g soya bean meal per day to their diet for the final two weeks of pregnancy.

The twin bearing ewes moved on to 500g of concentrates per day this week, the triplets are on 750g, plus one pen of thin twins and the quads are receiving 1.1kg.

The ewe lambs are moving to 500g per day for the singles and 750g per day for the twins.

We are aiming to prevent the ewes from mobilising any of their body reserves during the last two months of pregnancy.

Having the ewes shorn does make visual observation a little easier, but this is no substitute for actually handling the animals.

Having ewes at the minimum body condition score of 3 at lambing time allows for high lamb growth rates to be achieved at turn out to pasture.

Once our ewes are turned out to pasture, we do not