Grass supplies across the farm are tight
Over the past few weeks, we have dosed all the lambs with a white wormer to ensure cover for Nematodirus, on the back of the high risk warnings issued by the Department of Agriculture for the parasite.
Lambs that show signs of scour and emptiness the weeks after dosing will get another dose, in case the drench was too early for some. The next time the lambs need a wormer, I will most likely use a persistent Moxidectin drench.
While drenching, all the lambs get a multi-trace element and vitamin dose (Optimise sheep).
As the farm has deficiencies in trace elements, I see a response to drenching them, and lambs have thrived well since.
This is also the option I chose for the sheep welfare scheme, supplementing lambs with minerals pre-weaning.
All the Mule, Blackface (Lanark type) ewe lambs and all the Bluefaced Leicester lambs were vaccinated for Clostridial diseases at around four weeks of age.
In hindsight I should have vaccinated the Mule wether lambs. I have lost two good Mule wether lambs for no apparent reason. The cold nights aren’t helping; I was blaming a clostridial disease of some sort but perhaps it wasn’t.
I will vaccinate all again. These lambs will get their booster shot in the next week.
Grass supplies across the farm are tight. It is a balancing act which is difficult to get right on knowing what grass growth will be like.
I took up some extra grass for silage this year and this has left things a little tighter, but I have spread some extra nitrogen to fields after ewes have grazed to help with regrowths.
Leafy regrowths
I plan to cut silage the last days of May or into early June. The fields were grazed off tight and good thick leafy regrowths are coming.
Despite all the doom and gloom around the place, lamb prices are holding up, as supplies are tight.
It’s very positive to see so many livestock marts adopting the use of technology for online sales. Online selling was always going to happen at some stage in the future but this has been sped up due to the virus.