With lambing underway on many mid-season lambing flocks, it may come to a stage where there will be surplus lambs on the farm that will need to reared artificially using milk replacer.

Farmers will try to cross-foster lambs onto other ewes that may have single lambs, but sometimes not everything falls into place and it ends up that a bag of milk replacer needs to be bought to rear these surplus lambs.

In this article, Una Kickey, who is a Volac national sales manager, goes through everything farmers need to know about getting their lambs off to the best possible start in life and also how best to rear these surplus lambs on milk replacer.

When, how and how much are frequent queries when it comes to feeding milk replacer to lambs. For old hands and new flock owners alike, now is the time to refresh your plans for rearing surplus lambs before lambing takes over your life.

Lambs can begin being fed milk replacer at around a day old. Newborn lambs should always receive colostrum as soon as possible after birth, preferably within the first six hours of life. This should be continued for the first 24 hours.

The newborn lamb should receive a minimum of 210ml/kg bodyweight of colostrum within the first 24 hours (e.g, a 4kg lamb should receive 840ml).

Getting the ratio of milk replacer to water right is very important to avoid health issues such as scour. In order to make up one litre of milk it is advised to mix 200g of Lamlac with 800ml of water.

Do not add 200g to a full litre of water as this will create 1.2L overall, which will dilute the concentration. The total volume of powder and water together should total a litre.

Use scales to accurately measure out the correct amount of milk powder.

Water used to mix milk replacer should always be below 45°C – otherwise, you will damage the milk proteins which are essential to lamb performance.

Yes, lambs should have access to fresh water, straw in racks, and a top-quality creep feed at all times. Refreshing creep feed at least once a day will encourage intake.

There is no transfer of antibodies across the placenta in ruminants. This means lambs are born with no protection against disease and are reliant on colostrum for passive immunity.

Newborn lambs have a very permeable gut lining that can allow any ingested bacteria and toxins into the bloodstream. Slow gut movements during the first day of life give ingested bacteria more time to establish and multiply.

Newborn lambs have limited energy reserves. All lambs are born with a finite amount of brown fat within their bodies, which acts as a stopgap between birth and the time a lamb is able to feed.

Newborn lambs have a large surface area to bodyweight ratio, which makes them susceptible to heat loss. This means they lose heat at a much higher rate when they are wet than when they are dry.

The ability to survive is largely dependent on the response of the lamb to the environment into which it is born. Lambs are born wet, often into cold or wet conditions and with limited energy reserves.

High energy levels are needed to maintain body temperature, and these must be supplied by efficient metabolism of their brown fat and by the ability of the lamb to stand and suckle to obtain milk.

Any lambs that do not feed within the first few hours after birth will soon run out of energy reserves to keep warm and will die rapidly if there is no intervention – no matter what environment they are born into.

For further information, freephone: 0800 8652 2522, or browse www.lamlac.co.uk or contact Volac NI business manager Alistair Sampson on: 0786 0626 442 or email at [email protected].