Bottle lamb percentage from flock

In the last 15 years we’ve been running roughly 7-800 ewes, usually 2 complete pillocks who are to thick to go under a ewe.... we keep 4-5 on at the end of lambing ( 1 twin off the last few ewe lambs) so that we’ve got 4-5 on the bottle for an educational side of the business we’re involved in.

Last year I did circa 105 wet adoptions onto singles (or a ewe with the first twin dead) and around 30 skinnings. Our triplets and singles are lambed inside at night or wet days for ease of adoptions, twins are left out..

GreenerGrass said:

Grown my flock over the last couple of years, and am midway through lambing. Averaging 180%, and I have 5 bottle lambs- 1 set of orphan twins and 3 whose Mum rejected them in favour of their twin/triplet. Out of a total of 64 lambs.

Pleased with the everything so far, but (and I know how long is a piece of string) but what sort of bottle lamb percentages are typical. I appreciate it depends on lambing percentage and ewe lambs etc.. I have 3 sets of triplets left on ewes, I know some would lift one, which would also affect numbers.

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It’s a meaningless statistic imo, and can’t tell you anything much.

I currently have 7 on the machine (just finishing their bag of powder up, then weaned) from a bunch of 100 that lambed early. They are pedigree Charollais sheep, which aren’t the best maternally. If they had been the same number from my Highlander flock, i’d Have been surprised if there had been a couple.
On the same farm, my 120 strong March lambing pedigree flock last year, left about 30 on the machine, many of which were twins from ewe lambs (which popped out around 180%)
Still on the same farm, the 480 ewes/ewe lambs that I lambed in April last year, left 4 on the machine by the end. I will not ever leave any ewe rearing three, but did leave a dozen or so ewe lambs rearing twins.

What do any of those numbers tell anyone?

Try to have none , most years 2 or 3 out of 1100 ewes , put a lot of effort into adoption

I have sold 5 pet lambs @ £30 can’t be bothered with bottle feeding takes up too much time. Similar scan % with about 80-90 lambs on ground so far