Sheep Scanning
- Thread starter lincolnred
- Start date
- Location
- Dumfries & Galloway
Hellish!
My ground would be like that if I had ring feeders out, too
polk_farmer
Member
- Location
- South West (Gods Country)
That picture has made me feel abit better about our sheep out strip grazing the beet
muleman
Member
Thinking of sheep on stubble turnips and beet is what consoles me!
The ewes are remarkably clean, and don't seem to be climbing onto each other.
Hopefully the rest of the ground will be clean, and provide a dry lie and you can clean it up before lambing to stop lambs getting bogged.
muleman
Member
There are 2 feeders like the one in pic, can get about 90 ewes round them and there 200 in the field so plenty of feeding space so dont need to be jumping on each other....there are plenty of grassy drier bits for the sheep to lie after they have got their bellies full. Hate making a mess of fields though but dont know what the answer is, we are at the mercy of mother nature, another very wet week to come by looks of it. Have to feed the ewes cos nothing worse than lambing lean ones with no milk! Hopefully will have dried up by lambing time after which i usually harrow and reseed the places where feeders have damaged which can amount to a few acres over the farm
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our fields are wetter than 2 years ago when we had all that rain, apart from a dryish spell over xmas, its never really stopped since 1st week in September.
- Location
- Lincolnshire
201 ewes mostly mules.
7 barren
21 singles
109 twins
64 triplets
Similar to last year, lots of triplets. I'd be happier with less triplets.
7 barren
21 singles
109 twins
64 triplets
Similar to last year, lots of triplets. I'd be happier with less triplets.
yep. Would take over 150% with no triplets all day long
- Location
- Lincolnshire
We have all of the ewes on a "sacrifice" field in the run up to lambing. No real grass left on it but feeding beet and hay. It's free draining sand so not muddy but beaten flat.
We can't spread them over the rest of the grass as its on heavier land and will poach it and slow spring growth too much.
The amount of hay they pull out of the ring feeders stops them poaching the soil around them!
We can't spread them over the rest of the grass as its on heavier land and will poach it and slow spring growth too much.
The amount of hay they pull out of the ring feeders stops them poaching the soil around them!
- Location
- Lincolnshire
I suppose if they know they are all triplets they can justify a milk powder system, whereas for us we mess about with patching on to singles which is a hit and miss affair depending on what lambs when. We run a pen of triplet lambs on cold milk buckets which works reasonably well but is all extra hassle we could well do without, taking up shed space and labour. Such lambs rarely seem to do well when turned out to grass here, and would be better kept in, fed concentrates and got away early. They seem to pick up every bug going when turned onto grass in our experience and are usually the last to finish.
- Location
- Lincolnshire
Cows 4 teats, max 2 calves, fine.
Sheep, 2 teats, max 4 lambs, equals serious design flaw in my opinion. It's the biggest thing that pees me off about sheep. How did it come about. Heard they actually bred the Cambridge to have lots of lambs. Can't think of a more stupid thing to do, but I am not a shepherd, just get dragged in at lambing time away from the arable.
Sheep, 2 teats, max 4 lambs, equals serious design flaw in my opinion. It's the biggest thing that pees me off about sheep. How did it come about. Heard they actually bred the Cambridge to have lots of lambs. Can't think of a more stupid thing to do, but I am not a shepherd, just get dragged in at lambing time away from the arable.
- Location
- Fife
Let the ewes rear the triplets. Record which lambs go with which ewes.
When selecting replacement ewe lambs, retain those which were reared as a triplet.
- Location
- Dumfries & Galloway
You'd go through a lot of pain before you got any sort of gain if you let ewes rear 3's with no help
- Location
- Fife
Life is a journey.
- Location
- Dumfries & Galloway
It's a big blow to your business selling poor lambs.
Even bigger blow keeping them as ewes
If you can somehow 'subsidise' or just afford the financial hit in the short term, the long term genetic gains would set you well...
But from experience - I'm 13-14years down the line with my flock change and I'm still not fully where I want to be, yet! It's a very long road...
- Location
- Fife
Better to do it with someone else’s money ?
I had 140 pet lambs last year and I have to say its one of my favorite jobs, I think it because I was bought up with dairy so rearing calves and intensively feeding stock is some I like to do. I do mine with heatwave machines and never let them out of the shed, the first draw go 2 weeks before any off the ewes you can almost see them growing on ad lib milk and creep. I takes me about hour in the morning (4am) to clean the feeders milk, mix the milk and fill the creep feeders. then just before I go home at night mix the milk and check they are all ok.
- Location
- Lincolnshire
Yes we tried that approach when we first went back into sheep 15 years ago and although some ewes managed it, most didn't, ending up with a knackered bag and often a thrown off lamb that ended up needing help from the bottle out in the field.
So now all triplets that we can't patch on go in the milk feeder pen.
Fully agree. Set about the job properly and it should work out fine.