how many folk lamb in May?

spark_28

Member
Location
Western isles
i agree with @Nithsdale Farmer but i would say dont leave any intire your first year or so until you establish your best breeding ewes. You dont want to just sell your biggest lambs from the whole lot as they are prob singles and not really your best just have had a better start. Once you see what ewes are consitantly twinning and rearing a good weight of lambs to finish with no intervension then those ewes can be your stud and lambs from the kept for stud breeding.

tbh that was going to be my original plan. was going to record everything the first 2-3 years and then split off the most successful ewes as a nucleus flock. still run them with the original but know which ones i wish to continue recording to hopefully work to an end where i can leave 80% of my flock lambing alone on the hill and have the rest continueing to be recorded
 

scottish-lleyn

Member
Mixed Farmer
tbh that was going to be my original plan. was going to record everything the first 2-3 years and then split off the most successful ewes as a nucleus flock. still run them with the original but know which ones i wish to continue recording to hopefully work to an end where i can leave 80% of my flock lambing alone on the hill and have the rest continueing to be recorded
good plan.
 
I always used to lamb a lot of sheep from 22 April onwards and the reasons were weather and grass. The prospect the weather would be kinder and there would be a bite of grass to turn ewes and lambs onto or lamb sheep on. I now lamb everything from the first of April and my reasons are weather can often be as bad or worse at the end of April as it is at the beginning, ewes are harder to twin as they could have been in season three times before they’ve seen a tup and gone off the boil, if tups miss first cycle then there’s more chance of late lambers or geld sheep if you hit bad weather at tupping on second cycle, sheep still lambing late so harder to clear silage ground than lambing early, lambs need to be of size and be born to capitalise on fast spring growing grass, too many small lambs at weaning, feel like a tit when everyone else is finished and you are still arsing on.
Fell sheep now that’s a different matter
 
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Farmer_Joe

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
The North
same as above its better at tupping time which seem to work better they all get on first cycle,

grass is growing 1st april onwards, makes it better for first worming timinings and click, also meadows for cutting then grass to finish lambs for makert etc.

ive done later but for me the 1st april works spot on,i i only leave tups in for a month so im finished start may for all other summer stuff.
 

spark_28

Member
Location
Western isles
farming is not my job so other work wont be affected. The weather can be shiter end of april into may but it wont be as cold hopefully. tbh after about 10 years plus of lambing out here i can probably count on 1 hand the amount of lambs ive lost to weather. the biggest problem is not having grazing to keep them going
 

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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