Next years lambing

[mghley]

The Weather !
Every thing else will stay the same.
A reasonably dry winter with afew sharpe frosts ( nothing hard enough to freeze the pipes ) dry sunny weather dispersed with afew showers sufficient to maintain the water table and ensure An early bite of grass for turnout.
Other than the above all will remain the same and I will be as optimistic as ever !!!!!

 

[Al R]

Probably have to adapt the trailer to keep ewe and her lambs together so can space them out in the field individually but some of my ewes can be pretty brutal with the lambs in the mixing pens up against the hurdles. Sometimes wonder which is worse.

Put a pair down and then only release that ewe from the trailer..
I am putting a block of ewe lambs out every few days of 20 lambs and then dropping the tailgates on the nugent trailer and letting 20 ewes run off :0

 

[S J H]

We have no problems going from individual pens to fields.. I’ve got a few sheds/bits that I could chuck a couple of ewes and lambs into if the weather stayed bad and all pens were full but this year we didn’t use them at all, straight out from the shed once happy with them, anything from 4 hours upwards.

I've bought more than usual in this year, but I daren't turn them out of pens straight back to the field, as I leave them in a group pen for a few days.

 

[Green farmer]

I asked a few Days ago but didn’t get any answer, can ewes and newborns stand on plastic slats ? One thing I used to hate about indoor lambing was having to use straw, a lot of labour required to keep place clean and dry from urine, for a few hundred sheep inside a shed.

 

[Northeastfarmer]

I asked a few Days ago but didn’t get any answer, can ewes and newborns stand on plastic slats ? One thing I used to hate about indoor lambing was having to use straw, a lot of labour required to keep place clean and dry from urine, for a few hundred sheep inside a shed.

I think @MJT lambs on them but I could be mistaken

 

[Sheep92]

What concentrates are you feeding? If nuts I'd recommend bucket and chuck it. And if so also recommend keeping a few walk through feeders to make a platform to chuck from.

Were feeding nuts, will definitly try that first, would be very handy
Still keeping the central feed passages which are slightly raised so should work fine, will still have a couple of feeders for a smaller shed

 

[Sheep92]

I asked a few Days ago but didn’t get any answer, can ewes and newborns stand on plastic slats ? One thing I used to hate about indoor lambing was having to use straw, a lot of labour required to keep place clean and dry from urine, for a few hundred sheep inside a shed.

Yea my neighbour lambs 1400 ewes on them and also has concrete and mesh slats, but works it so the ly lamb mainly on the plastic slats
He also has to keep ewes and lambs in with the bad weather on the plastic slats
Thought about putting them in the shed here but the cost is huge, bought a strawblower instead

 

[Bluesman]

Take the rams out after 21 days as I cannot stand a long lambing period. Increase the number of Lleyn ewes in the flock as they were a joy at lambing. Lamb ewe lambs again, first time this year and on the whole it went well - used a Charollais tup on them. Ewes and lambs back out to grass by 7 days old on grass and high energy buckets, no hard feed.

 

[MJT]

I asked a few Days ago but didn’t get any answer, can ewes and newborns stand on plastic slats ? One thing I used to hate about indoor lambing was having to use straw, a lot of labour required to keep place clean and dry from urine, for a few hundred sheep inside a shed.

Lamb everything on slats here, no problem at all, saves a hell of a lot of time and money not having to bed them up all th time . When in individual pens they do get some straw on top of slats, but that’s it .

 

[neilo]

I don’t intend changing much, other than the genetics of some of the maternal rams to line breed back to Highlander (sons already tagged, recorded and left entire).
Undecided whether the 9 pure Lleyn shearlings I still have will ever see a ram again, or whether they’ll get the chance of a terminal (hats off to you guys that run them pure).
Numbers might drift up a bit, but not far out for the system here now I think. Always room to tweak productivity though....

 

[Al R]

I asked a few Days ago but didn’t get any answer, can ewes and newborns stand on plastic slats ? One thing I used to hate about indoor lambing was having to use straw, a lot of labour required to keep place clean and dry from urine, for a few hundred sheep inside a shed.

I’m not sure but I read somewhere recently that a lot of the farm assurance schemes don’t allow young lambs on slats?

 

[sheepwise]

Lamb everything on slats here, no problem at all, saves a hell of a lot of time and money not having to bed them up all th time . When in individual pens they do get some straw on top of slats, but that’s it .

Any pics?

 

[CopperBeech]

Have been thinking about this lots. Only really half way now.

Unfortunatly this was the one year we had a tup break out and worse a rig running somewhere it seems, so we had a bunch of ewes, randomly lambing across a couple of groups, ahead of the others, outside, right when the bad weather hit! Suffice to say, i'll stick to mid April onwards for our outdoor lot.

Next year, hopefully lamb the main indoor lot from 1st March, but take tups out sooner and try to tighten it up to six weeks max. More lleyns, less mules, but a charmoise on the ewe lambs rather than a lleyn. A few tweaks to shed lay out to. Also hoping to try lambing a bunch of the B grade exlana ewes indoors, on a forage system, in March all to terminal tups as numbers are building nicely.

From Mid April ish, will simplify our system, and lamb two lots at the same time, on the same ground (either side of a river), the exlana a team, teased and lambed all to exlana tups, and the other side, a bunch of draft ewes hopefully all bought from one source which have been great this year, all to charmoise and teased. Ewes lambed in raddle groups and processed and moved to a summer block in batches, where they stay till weaning.

The May lot is yet to come so we will see on that one. . . ..

 

[MJT]

Any pics?

Hopefully these show the layout / stocking density of shed, and the slats themselves, and how they are cleaned out.

 

[Estate fencing.]

I'm going to go back to using spectam on the lambs as soon as there born, I had a very depressing time towards the end when seemed to loose countless lambs to watery mouth. Its not the finical loss because have 100 spare lambs anyway more the emotional loss of loosing a lot of lambs when you are shattered. but apart from that would change to much, tried to harden off the lambs this year in outside pens with great success, didn't loose many lambs at all in all that foul weather and meant when they went out to fields they where used to having rain on the backs.

 

[exmoor dave]

Thinking of kitting the sheds out with 3-1 feeders, have dabbled with it this year, but finding it hard to perfect.

Back in Feb I had a group of twin ewes on a feeder filled with 50/50 oat/cake mix, once settled they were taking just over a kg a day, so obvs more expensive then the 0.75kg of cake I'd bucket and chuck it in for them, but pens stayed cleaner for longer with the feeder as the ewes aren't rooting round for cake, ewes are proper calm, shepherd is even calmer not doing the twice day cake scrum.
Big strong Suffolk ewes.

Attempted to repeat with more feeders for our april ewes, exmoor mules and various shedders.
Used oats and protein pellets thinking that I could restrict the feeders abit more with out as many blockages, but the ewes are just scoffing the grub!
And still had quite a few cases of calcium deficiency cases to treat. I'm guessing because whole grains are low in calcium.
Only other difference is the lot are getting poorer hay than the Feb lot.

I think the idea is sound but it needs some more thought, also once lambing is underway and temporary pens are getting thrown up, it's not practical to fill the feeders with the loader and hopper box, so mixed feed needs carrying in, so that needs some thought too.

 

[Becs]

Did something really simple this year that worked a treat. A friend made me some different coloured canvas flag-type things that I could tie on the front of the pens. Blue for triplets in pen, yellow for 'special needs, ie an adopted lamb in pen or a ewe not milking well, and red for '999' , ie a sick ewe or lamb that needed a really close eye kept on them. Previously I've tied a glove/ towel/ piece of string to pens to remind me but being as there are usually loads of towels/gloves / string lying around the shed, I'd get 'blind' to them. The colours worked brilliantly as they stood out and so I'd always remember where to make an extra check or where to grab a triplet to adopt over. ( The colours also made the shed look really jolly, like bunting at a street party! A feed delivery driver commented that it was the nicest lambing shed he'd ever seen!!)
I also bought some sheep collars so anything to be culled next year leaves the shed in ' a collar of shame'!

 

[Northeastfarmer]

Did something really simple this year that worked a treat. A friend made me some different coloured canvas flag-type things that I could tie on the front of the pens. Blue for triplets in pen, yellow for 'special needs, ie an adopted lamb in pen or a ewe not milking well, and red for '999' , ie a sick ewe or lamb that needed a really close eye kept on them. Previously I've tied a glove/ towel/ piece of string to pens to remind me but being as there are usually loads of towels/gloves / string lying around the shed, I'd get 'blind' to them. The colours worked brilliantly as they stood out and so I'd always remember where to make an extra check or where to grab a triplet to adopt over. ( The colours also made the shed look really jolly, like bunting at a street party! A feed delivery driver commented that it was the nicest lambing shed he'd ever seen!!)
I also bought some sheep collars so anything to be culled next year leaves the shed in ' a collar of shame'!

You just want some of these, then chalk on any special requirements

 

[Lili]

Did something really simple this year that worked a treat. A friend made me some different coloured canvas flag-type things that I could tie on the front of the pens. Blue for triplets in pen, yellow for 'special needs, ie an adopted lamb in pen or a ewe not milking well, and red for '999' , ie a sick ewe or lamb that needed a really close eye kept on them. Previously I've tied a glove/ towel/ piece of string to pens to remind me but being as there are usually loads of towels/gloves / string lying around the shed, I'd get 'blind' to them. The colours worked brilliantly as they stood out and so I'd always remember where to make an extra check or where to grab a triplet to adopt over. ( The colours also made the shed look really jolly, like bunting at a street party! A feed delivery driver commented that it was the nicest lambing shed he'd ever seen!!)
I also bought some sheep collars so anything to be culled next year leaves the shed in ' a collar of shame'!

Use lengths of coloured ribbon here tied to the front of the pens. Orange for lambs been ringed, red for problems, green ready to go out. Does cheer the place up a bit too.

 

[It was already broken.]

Thinking of putting up a new shed. Then filling it full of hay for the pony brigade and carry on lambing outside.