Maintaining the health of stock rams

AS many farms prepare for mating, the most important animal in any sheep farm for the next couple of weeks is the stock ram.

The ram makes up 50 per cent of any good flock of ewes, so having them right for the weeks ahead in vital. At this stage most farms have brought new rams onto the farm, and making sure these rams perform is vital.

All rams should be raddled going out to ewes, especially where single-sire mating is done. Firstly, start off with a light-colour raddle, and change the colour every 14 days. This will allow farmers to see any repeats that may be coming back.

Using a lighter colour allows you to move onto darker colours as the weeks progress, making it easy to identify freshly mated ewes at a glance.

Keeping records of the colour and the date each colour was used is a good way of knowing when ewes are due to lamb. A ram will lose roughly 15 per cent of his body condition during mating.

Therefore body condition scores of four+ are the best. Ewe-to-ram ratio is also an important factor; for a mature ram, one ram to 35 to 50 ewes is the target. For ram lambs, it’s one to 15 to 25 ewes.

A common myth in sheep-breeding circles is that injecting antibiotics into a lame or sick ram could lead to infertility.

This isn’t the case. Most fertility issues are caused by a spike in body temperature, which is often the result of a farmer not using an antibiotic treatment in time.

Once mating is finished, pulling all rams and introducing meal is a good idea to build up body condition.

These sheep will be needed again next year, and a small bit of minding goes along way in terms of growth and condition over winter months.