Lambs will be playing catch up on their weight gain targets

AFTER an extremely difficult and late spring everything has changed for the better. With grass growth improving, meal feeding of ewes was cut out the first week of May.

We are only feeding hoggets that are rearing twins and this will stop soon. We are just using up what meal is still in the shed.

Their lambs have access to creep feeder and are eating about 200grs per head per day. We will keep feeding creep up until weaning.

We are dividing paddocks with three rows of poly wire for ewes and lambs, allowing them enough grass for three days. This gives us a good clean-out of the grass quickly and helps with re-growth. We have taken out some paddocks for silage, putting on two bags of 18.6.12 per acre.

These should be ready for cutting the second week of June. We have more that will be ready to cut the end of May.

This will all be made into baled silage; mowed and tedded out to improve dry matter then baled on the third day after mowing.

Our aim is to push on grazing ground to get maximum growth, taking out all extra grass for winter feed. When we look back at this time last year we had 100 surplus bales left over from the year before and over 100 bales made.

This year we have just a few bales of hay in the shed so the push is on to gather up somewhere about 700 bales between hay and silage for the coming winter.

All the CPT lambs were weighed the last days of April. They had an average liveweight of 17.3kg. Surprisingly the Belclare lambs were the heaviest at 18.2kg, with the