There has definitely been an increase in the number of farmers going down the route of lambing ewes earlier this year, according to Kieran McGee.
AgriLand spoke to Kieran during the week, who works for Farm Relief Services (FRS) as a bovine ultrasound technician.
The scanning season began for him back in November and he said that it’s been gradually getting busier and that once January comes it will be full tilt scanning mid-season lambing flocks.
“We are getting into the peak scanning season for sheep again. It’s building up week-on-week. It’s going to be getting really busy from now until the end of February,” Kieran said.
“I have a lot of early-lambing flocks done now. It’s been a busier end to the year than other years. More farmers seem to be testing the water and trying out lambing a few ewes earlier this year.
I’m out scanning every day at the minute. I did about 300-400 one day this week but it wouldn’t normally be that much this time of the year.
“Between the pedigree farmers and the ones looking to get early spring lambs, we have done a lot more scanning at this stage of the year than we would have normally done. There are a good few of the farmers I know lambing around Christmas that wouldn’t normally be lambing then.
“I started out scanning in early-to-mid November for the farmers lambing early in December. Once January comes, I’ll be hitting the mid-season lambing ewes and I’ll be scanning 700-900 a day I’d say.
Scans have been very good so far. If I was to put a figure on it I would say they are running 10-12% ahead of last year.
“It’s been a good year for grass and with the wet back end, farmers had more grass for ewes as it was too wet for cattle to graze so that meant both ewes and rams were in great nick for the breeding period and that is obviously now being reflected in the scans.
“A farmer I was out to today (Monday, December 7) scanned 2.1, while most other flocks I have scanned have been scanning 1.85-1.90.
“1.9 would be consistent with any farmers that had sponged a group of 40-50 ewes.”
‘Mid-season flocks trying out early-lambing now’
Kieran said he has noticed a couple of farmers are going down the route of lambing 20-30 of their ewes early, rather than lambing them all down mid-season.
“I now a good few farmers that let’s say are lambing 100 ewes and they have decided to lamb 20-30 of them at Christmas – to try it out and see how they get on,” he explained.
I’ve noticed this year that there are more farmers getting into the early-lambing system compared to other years.
“It died away there for a while but I’d say with the price of lamb and, as far as I know, Ramadan and Easter aren’t that far apart, so I’m thinking farmers are hoping that the trade will be good for the early spring lamb come then next year.”