If you think EID is going to make any difference you may as well believe in the tooth fairy

IT’S the time of year when sheep farmers start to think about when they want lambing 2019 to start.

I have decided that I am going to start lambing towards the end of March instead of at the beginning of the month — if I still have sheep on the farm, that is.

I made this decision based on the extreme nature of the weather we now get due to climate change. I think you need to either take these things into consideration or else be prepared to bear the brunt of excess costs of labour and feed that are associated with extreme weather events and an earlier lambing date.

Last spring certainly focused my mind, although April can be equally apocalyptic.

Who knows? I’ll err on the side of caution and start lambing later.

There are a lot of benefits to a later lambing date as it should mean reduced overall costs.

Labour is hard to get so a later lambing date should mean that you can lamb outside or, if you have to lamb inside, it should be possible to let ewes and lambs out within 24 hours.

Feed is expensive, so later lambing should reduce costs as, generally speaking, in a normal year grass growth should be getting to sustainable levels towards the end of March, provided that you have closed up fields for lambing the previous October.

The only problems I can see with later lambing is that it might be slower to draft lambs for sale, and having to finish them with meal.

However, you do have options to grow a finishing crop like fodder rape or to sell the lambs as stores.

I have selected some ewe lambs to retain as replacements and we are shearing them this week; as well as that I will vaccinate them against enzootic and toxoplasmosis abortion.

I do this every year and I think that with such a large f lock vaccinating against abortion is essential. By vaccinating replacement stock each year against abortion, your entire f lock should be covered in four to five years, depending on your replacement rate.

The grass situation on the farm is good and I will begin to close up paddocks I have identified for lambing next year as the autumn progresses, aiming to have 90pc of the farm closed up by mid-December.

At this stage all the sheep should be housed and the only stock that are outside are the remaining lambs to be finished.

I have gone through all the ewes again, picking out any culls that I might have missed.

Ewes with damaged or lumpy teats or suffering from lameness have to go.

There is no point in keeping them. I don’t even see the point in treating a ewe for lameness with antibiotics. I think you are better off culling her.

I have a fairly routine footbathing system set up here on the farm so if it’s the case that a ewe is still lame despite all the foothbathing then she is better off culled, as no amount of antibiotics will cure her — the lameness simply passes from one foot to the next.

You have to front up and be ruthless about culling as inevitably it’s the lame sheep or the ewe with one teat that ends up taking the most time to deal with in spring.

I continue to draft lambs for slaughter at a price that is not sustainable.

In fact they are losing money so despite my best effor ts to be efficient, most of the producers in the industry are now operating at a loss or at a profit level that is less than the minimum wage.

I got my letter regarding the introduction of EID tagging, and read about how the Minister had now listened to all the stakeholders but is still pressing ahead with EID introduction, albeit at a later date, without any compensation for sheep farmers.

While I like being a sheep farmer and believe it to be a worthwhile industry, the forced introduction of EID is the last straw as it’s a signal to me that government nor industry simply could not care less about rural Ireland.

There is not one sheep farmer in the country who believes that EID tagging will mean better returns or increased market access for sheep meat.

If you believe this, you may as well believe in the tooth fair y.

We need a government who understands and listens to all sectors of Irish agriculture and has a realistic vision for its future.

Rural communities deserve more than lip service, jargon and convenient photo opportunities that portray an image of our politicians ‘looking busy’.

IT’S A SIGNAL TO ME THAT NEITHER INDUSTRY NOR GOVERNMENT COULD CARE LESS ABOUT RURAL IRELAND