Pre-lambing nutrition has a major bearing on flock viability

Here we go again, another year. When one stops and looks back, you wonder where the last 10 years have gone since I began scribbling this once-amonth article.

2020 was a new experience for everyone, but with the arrival of these vaccines there is light at the end of the tunnel and a return to a less restrictive lifestyle for all.

Whatever happens, life will go on here on the farm, with ewes to lamb in March and April.

We have most of the ewes scanned showing a 75pc conception rate to first service, with the ewes in-lamb carrying 1.94 lambs per ewe.

Our triplet numbers have dropped to 20pc which should be more manageable. We have 55pc with twins which is very good and the singles are at 25pc.

The ewes that showed up as repeats and all ewes that were empty at scanning will be scanned again in early February.

All these ewes are outside on forage rape and bales of silage. Our straw supply is low, and the quality is not good so these ewes will be kept out for as long as possible.

Our focus now turns to the ewes that will lamb in early March.

We are trying to offer them the correct plane of nutrition during mid and late pregnancy to ensure an adequate supply of colostrum post-lambing.

This will produce lambs close to optimum weight with increased vigour, thus reducing mortality and increasing performance.

The birth weight of lambs influences subsequent growth rate and weaning weight.

Lamb viability

Studies have shown for each 0.5kg increase in birth weight, weaning weight increases by around 1.7kg, so birth weight is a major factor influencing lamb viability.

Optimum lamb birth weight is influenced by litter size. We try not to have single lambs weighing over 6kg, and with the twins our aim is over 5kg. Triplets are the hardest to get right and we try to get them up to 4.5kg.

Our first job after scanning was to divide the ewes up into three groups, according to the number of lambs they are carrying.

We are feeding the triplets 250grms of meal, just some lamb ration we have left.

Now we must decide on what to feed. When buying concentrate we will select on its ingredient composition and not solely on price.

We will use a concentrate containing 19pc crude protein which is formulated primarily using good protein (soya) energy (maize, barley) and fibre (beet pulp, soya hulls) ingredients.

All ewes that are housed are being fed good quality silage which is 73 DMD. This should be good enough to feed the twins for this month, and then we will introduce meal.

Any ewes that are thin or that lose weight will be put on meal earlier. When feeding meal make sure they have enough trough space so they can all eat together.

We have nearly all last year’s lambs sold with just 30 left. We sold the last big draft last week.

Other years we held on until February, but with the price so strong we decided to sell most of them, and this will also free up more forage rape for the ewes.