The first of the store lambs for the 2024/2025 season are set to arrive on the ABP Demo Farm in the coming week.
With this season’s store lambs about to arrive on the farm, Agriland caught up with ABP Food Group’s Advantage Beef Programme farm liaison officer, Gavin Healy, to hear how the 2023 season went and to find out the plan for the store lamb enterprise on the farm this year.
Gavin explained that last year, a total of 610 wether and ewe lambs were purchased onto the ABP Demo Farm from mid-August (2023) at an average weight of 31.5kg.
This year, the ABP Demo Farm aims to purchase lambs at 30kg in mid-August (2024) for slaughter in February/March 2025.
He said: “With the early housing of cattle last autumn, the lambs played a vital role in reducing the grass surplus over the winter months leaving a fresh sward for the turn-out of yearling cattle.”
Like all livestock systems, attention to detail on animal health is essential to keep mortality as low as possible.
The key animal health protocols for the store lamb system on the farm are as follows:
- Lambs vaccinated against pasteurellosis, pneumonia and clostridial diseases;
- A blowfly preventative pour-on administered;
- Lambs receive a monthly cobalt drench as well as a run through a zinc sulphate footbath when in the mobile handling unit;
- Fluke and worm doses are chosen and administered according to dung sample results.
Lambs were then built up to a finishing diet of 1kg concentrates/head/day with access to both grass and silage. The first of the lambs were drafted for processing at Irish Country Meats (ICM) Camolin, Co. Wexford on January 18, 2024.
Gavin said: “The overall performance of the lambs was excellent especially considering the persistent rain of the winter gone by.”
On average, the lambs were drafted for processing at a liveweight of 51kg with a mean drafting date for slaughter of March 4.
Lambs had an average carcass weight of just over 22kg and an overall average daily live weight gain of 0.14kg/head/day across the group.
The table below outlines the performance details of the lambs slaughtered in spring 2023 vs 2024:
Description 2023 2024 Number of lambs: 602 610 Average arrival weight: 31.1kg 31.5kg Live weight at slaughter: 52.4kg 51.2kg Kill-out weight: 22.8kg 22.6kg Paid weight: 22.2kg 22.2kg Kill-out percentage: 43.5% 44.3% Days on farm: 217 204 Average daily gain (ADG) 0.10 0.14 Mortality percentage: 1.8% 2.8%
Lambs are typically vaccinated against clostridial diseases one week after arrival to the farm. However, last year 3-4 lambs were lost in the first week so the plan going forward is to vaccinate the lambs sooner after arrival to bring down the mortality rate.
Store lambs for 2025 on ABP Demo Farm
This year’s store lambs will be expected to arrive in the next week and included in this group is a group of five-star sired lambs from the ICM Sustainability Trial.
The aim of the trial is to demonstrate the benefits of using five-star rams on family farms across a range of systems.
Updates on the trial as the store lambs arrive on the ABP Demo Farm will be published in due course.