Sheep Focus: ‘Early-lambing twin and triplet-bearing ewes have been started on meal’

The early-lambing ewes at Gurteen Agricultural College have been housed and preparations are well underway for lambing at the start of January.

The early-lambing ewes are now housed over a week and to find out how they are being prepared for the lambing period, AgriLand spoke to the drystock manager at Gurteen, Gerard Carey.

He said: “The early lambing ewes were scanned in the first week of November and we ended up with 80 in-lamb, with a scanning rate of 1.75.

Out of the 80 in-lamb ewes, we have 25 singles, 51 twins and four triplets. I was happy with the scan. I’m happy enough to lamb down 80.

“Those 80 early ewes that are in-lamb were let out to the ram on August 6 and we left them out for 24 days – until about the first week in September. It was only a short window; we didn’t sponge them or anything like that – so I was happy with how they got on.

“The other 20 ewes that didn’t go in-lamb were run with the ram again in October and they will be housed with the rest of the mid-season lambing flock towards the end of this month or into January.”

Diet and flock health

The early-lambing ewes are currently being fed silage, while the twin and triplet-bearing ewes have been started on meal as well.

Gerard said: “The ewes are on silage and we have just sent off a sample of it to get tested. Going by the look of it, it looks like good stuff.

As well as that, the twin and triplet-bearing ewes have been started on concentrates. They are being fed 0.3kg at the minute and week-by-week, it will be increased by about 0.1kg.

“By the time the twin and triplet-bearing ewes are close to lambing, they will be on 0.7kg a day.

“I won’t go over 0.7kg either because the silage quality is good I reckon so there won’t be a need for a huge amount of meal.

“In terms of the single-bearing ewes, the plan is to introduce concentrates to them about 10 days before they lamb at a rate of 0.2-0.3kg a day.

In terms of the flock’s health, we ran the ewes through a footbath when they were coming in and they have also been vaccinated against clostridial diseases.

“I’ll be crutching the ewes’ tail ends this week just to clean them up a bit and to be able to see what’s happening when they are close to lambing.”

Mid-season lambing ewes

The mid-season lambing ewes are still currently out grazing but Gerard reckons they will be housed before the new year.

He added: “The mid-season lambing ewes are still out. Half of them are on fodder rape, while the other half are on fodder beet tops. They have a grass lieback to come back onto as well.

They will be housed probably on January 1 or even before. I have a good bit of fodder rape and beet tops for them still but it all depends on the weather. We have just started really on the beet tops in fact.

Rams

With the breeding period over now for the mid-season lambing flock, Gerard said he was pleasantly surprised in how good of condition that the rams were in at the end of the breeding season.

He explained: “The rams are back out on their bachelor pad again. We are feeding them over 0.5kg of meal just to build them back up.

Now in saying that, they came off the ewes in great nick. You can’t beat feeding them well before they go out to ewes; it really stands to them over the course of the breeding period.

“They weren’t overworked but still they had their work to do and it was a fairly compact breeding season too.

“Even the ram lambs came back in serious condition. They didn’t lose too much weight. In fairness, the fields they were in were quite small so they didn’t have big fields to have to go around to find ewes.

“They’re out on grass at the minute, along with a bit of meal, so they should be fine. They have a good long rest period anyway.”

Texel ram during the breeding season at Gurteen Agricultural College