I splashed out on GPS guidance as I can’t afford to waste fertiliser
Back in the day my father remembers ploughing and haymaking being carried out by teams of men, with cigarettes and cups of tea, and two or three horses. He often reminisces about his fondness for the men he worked with and for the hard-working horses, with whom he bonded so well.
Fast-forward 60 or 70 years, and in the same field his son is working a new tractor with a GPS guidance system which drives itself, with 140 horses underneath the bonnet.
I brought Dad for a spin in it and I can’t imagine what must be going through his head. It is unbelievable the changes that Irish agriculture has seen over the years, and the amount of change we will witness for our generation of farmers.
I invested in the GPS equipment because I can’t afford to waste fertiliser any more — I want to get it out accurately and quickly.
Gone are the days when you’d have a stone in a bag at either end of the field marking out roughly where you need to spread, or you’d be guessing what grass needs what when it comes to closing fields for silage.
Fertiliser is too valuable to be wasting it, and farming as a business is not very forgiving when it comes to wasting inputs.
The first phase of lambing is coming to an end and we are in a bit of a lull period waiting for the ewe hoggets to start. The mature ewes lambed in about two weeks, which shows how well the ram effect worked for me last October.
It was busy, and we were lucky with the weather as I lambed the twin-bearing ewes outside in fields that I had closed off since October.
We lambed the triplet-and singlebearing ewes inside and we were able to adopt off as many triplets as possible which has worked well.
I was really happy how the triplets went; maybe it’s too early to say but I think that having liquid molasses available to them throughout their pregnancy has helped them a lot.
Two other things that worked well for me this year was the ‘Udderly EZ’ hand pump for milking out ewes, and the administering of a glucose shot to a lamb on the way out.
The udder pump meant we could milk out a ewe easily and quickly, and get the much-needed colostrum ‘gold’ into the new-born lamb.
The 30ml glucose shot saved about 20 lambs for me; I never witnessed such an effective way to resuscitate an otherwise dying lamb.
I picked up all these new tips from sheep.net and Teagasc webinars held prior to lambing, and I’d recommend anyone to take a look at these. They were really helpful.
If you prepare your flock well, feed them, scan them, conditionscore them, put a good health plan in place and prepare your grass in advance, lambing should be a busy but rewarding time.
We’re watching out for grass tetany. It rears its ugly head this time of year and I do everything I can to prevent it. I put out lots of high-magnesium buckets and put some liquid magnesium into the field drinkers. So far so good.
Prevention is the only route to take with grass tetany as curing it seldom works. Some people tell magnesium it’s a waste of time, but since I started putting it in the field drinkers I have had very little incidence of tetany.
I plan to dose the March-born lambs for the nematodirus dose around the first week in May.
They are not eating all that much grass so it shouldn’t be an issue for them yet, but certainly earlierborn lambs could be susceptible to nematodirus infection.
If you don’t dose your lambs for this worm you greatly reduce their thrive. A simple cheap white dose is all you need to control nematodirus.
My focus is now on grassland. I have started grass measuring, although at the height of lambing, I didn’t get out to measure the entire farm. I’ll get back into it, as it is a very useful gauge when it comes to knowing how much fertiliser you need to spread and when.
Close the paddocks
I am gradually grazing the entire farm down to 4/5cm and moving stock on spreading 30kg of urea/ acre as I close the paddocks.
I also have an eye to closing up fields for silage. On the silage ground I have already spread half a bag/23 units of urea, but having lightly grazed some of this, I plan, when the weather gets a bit milder, to cover the silage ground with a further 85 units of nitrogen with either CAN or urea. I aim to cut silage towards the end of May or the first week in June.
The 30ml glucose shot saved about 20 lambs for me; I never witnessed such an effective way to resuscitate an otherwise dying lamb