Upping grass quality and quantity for lambs is the top priority now

WHEN GRASS gets tight at this time of the year you have to implement a system to prioritise lamb growth by giving the best grass you have to the lambs and cutting back on what the ewes get.

We will wean all the Marchborn lambs next week; they will be an average of 12 weeks old.

The optimum age to wean lambs is 100 days or 14 weeks. Leaving the lambs sucking the ewes for longer than this will have a negative effect on both parties as the ewes will be competing with the lambs for grass.

All our lambs have been dosed for worms and vaccinated for the second time with Heptivac P, and all received a mineral dose. We will put a pour-on product for fly strike on them at weaning; we will also weigh the lambs and record them for lameness and dag score as they go through the race.

The challenge post-weaning is to keep lambs going. The recipe for good lamb thrive after weaning is plenty of leafy grass.

So what have we in grass on the farm? After-grass is ideal for lambs and could maintain growth rates over 200g per day. We also have fields that were topped two weeks ago they received fertiliser at the weekend, and more importantly a few heavy showers of rain. This should push on growth and give us some more options when we wean.

We will put the weaned ewes onto fields that have gone a bit stemmy; we will graze them down as best we can, then top anything left down to 5cm or as low as the mower will safely cut to.

For both ewes and lambs after weaning, a plentiful supply of clean water is vital for them to thrive and it must be easily accessible.

A cobalt deficiency problem on your farm is easily recognised by poor lamb growth, and their wool will dry out. As lambs cannot store cobalt in the body they need a constant supply.

We can either drench lambs at two-week intervals with cobalt longer intervals give poor response.

Or we can treat lambs with boluses. We use a bolus on the smaller lambs as they will not be in for weighing every two weeks. We dose the stronger lambs with a drench after each fortnightly weighing.

If grass growth dose not match what our requirements are we may have to look a creep-feeding some lambs. Creep-feeding should be a benefit to good grassland management, not a substitute for poor management.

Feeding 300g per lamb daily will increase lamb performance and reduce age at slaughter by four weeks

so having more grass for ewes.

You will also get a higher kill-out percentage and slightly better carcase confirmation. The conversion rate is 7kg to 1kg lightweight.

The profitability is dependent on lamb price and the cost of the concentrates. So after last week’s price drop of 30cent, creep-feeding on this farm will be avoided if we have enough grass.

Other options for lambs after weaning is reseeded fields or forage crops, but after the dry spell these options are not available.

Whatever ways we feed lambs after weaning, just remember that getting lambs away quickly will leave you with more grass for ewes which will be needed to get them back to condition for next mating.