It pays to supplement thin ewes ahead of lambing

Preparations for the springtime are in full swing on Eddie Gavin’s mixed farm in Co Carlow, with ewes scanned and housed and silage analysis completed.

As well as running sheep, beef and tillage enterprises, Eddie works as a contractor and this is a particularly busy time of the year as he tries to get hedge cutting completed before lambing and spring cereal jobs begin.

In October Eddie joined 265 ewes with Suffolk, Belclare and Charollais rams and these ewes are due to start lambing in early March. The Suffolk and Belclare rams were put to the majority of the flock and it is from these rams that replacement ewe lambs will be selected.

Eddie removed the rams after six weeks, which will keep the lambing spread tight at a busy time of year on multiple fronts.

By having ewes in good body condition at mating time, using sufficient ram power and using raddle markers on the rams he was able to get over 90pc of the ewes lambed in a three-week period last year and the year before, while maintaining a high pregnancy rate.

The ewes were scanned recently and the pregnancy rate is back slightly compared to last year, but is still very good, achieving the target for lowland flocks to have over 95pc of ewes put to the ram in lamb.

Scanned litter size and scanning rate are up slightly on last year and are moving towards the 2.0 scanning rate target for the flock.

The empty ewes have been culled, removing potentially problematic animals as well as freeing up space in the shed for the in-lamb ewes.

The remainder of the ewes are housed on straw bedding with ad-lib access to silage, and concentrate supplementation been offered based on litter size.

All the ewes had their BCS assessed at the time of scanning and the results were encouraging, with an average of 3.4 and only 7pc of the flock below 3.0 (minimum BCS target for this time of year).

Where thin ewes were identified, they are now separated for extra feeding pre-lambing.

Building BCS at this late stage of pregnancy is very difficult as the ewe partitions additional energy to foetal growth, but the additional feeding will help ensure she at least maintains what BCS she currently has for lactation.

In Eddie’s case, any thin ewe scanned for a single was put in with the ewes scanned for twins and so on.

Eddie will be introducing concentrates to the ewes from 6-8 weeks out from lambing based on litter size.

The level being offered is based around the results of the silage analysis as higher-quality forage allows for concentrate feeding levels to be lowered.

Eddie’s silage analysis was mixed, with the batches ranging in DMD from 64 to 73.

A key component of the feeding plan is matching the silage budget to the results of the silage analysis.

Eddie has enough of the higher-quality silage for the ewes up to lambing time so concentrate feeding levels will be based around that silage.

However, where there is not enough high-quality silage to last until lambing time, the budget would have to be designed around the lower-quality silages or at least modified to allow that the silage quality would be changing significantly at some stage during the run-up to lambing.