23 January 2024

Drafting and scanning on the BETTER Sheep farms

Frank Campion of Teagasc AGRIC reports on lamb drafting and pregnancy scanning on the BETTER Sheep farms.

On the Co. Carlow flock, store lambs were purchased in September for grazing forage brassica crops. These lambs were housed for 48 hours at first and went through a biosecurity protocol. The crops yielded 4.5t DM/ha on average.

The first draft of lambs was sent for slaughter just before Christmas. Lambs will be weighed regularly and drafted once fit. In 2022, purchased lambs had an average initial liveweight of 30.1kg and were slaughtered once over 44kg with sufficient cover.

Lowland scanning

Ewes are housed across the lowland flocks. Pregnancy scanning and assessments of ewe body condition score (BCS) are ongoing. These will inform plans for winter feeding programmes along with results from forage quality and assessments. Initial results from silage tests show there was some good silage made last year, but there is variation.

Both quality and quantity of silage available need to be considered when doing a feeding plan. Ewe BCS will be assessed across the farms at scanning, but at time of writing anecdotal evidence suggests BCS has slipped on some. It is vital that these ewes are separated for extra feeding.

The hill flocks

Rams were removed from all hill flocks in December. Ewes returned to the hill where possible. Ewes will be gathered again from late January for scanning. Some ewes were held back from the hill due to poor BCS or health issues.

This article first appeared in the Teagasc Sheep Advisory Newsletter for January. Access the full publication here.

Also read: Forage crops and store lambs proving a good fit

Also read: Pregnancy scanning and using the results