Our ‘sheep priority’ this month is to give the lambs their first combined vaccination against the clostridial diseases and pasturella, as the protection they inherited from their dams will be waning now. They’ll have a further booster vaccination 4-6 weeks after the first and then all the sheep on the farm (including the rams) get their annual jab six weeks before next year’s lambing.
While the flock was gathered, we weighed each of the lambs; this is a fairly basic form of ‘performance recording’, which when compared with their birth weights, gives an indication of how well they’re growing. Eight-week growth rates are one of the indicators of their mother’s Maternal Ability – a hereditable characteristic that helps us to decide which lambs to keep for future breeding.
We’re very interested in Performance Recording for our flock of pedigree Hampshire Downs. At the moment, we only do basic recording: Birth weight, litter size, 8-week weight, and finishing time (that is, the time the lambs take to reach our target liveweight of 42kgs). We also keep records of sheep that are repeatedly lame or scouring, as these traits can be inherited – this information can tip the scales for us when deciding which ewes to retain as replacements.
In Programme 3 of the Sheep on Your Smallholding series, we explain the complex subject of Performance Recording and EBVs (Estimated Breeding Values) with the help of Sam Boon of Signet Recording, and a very enthusiastic Shropshire Down breeder who has successfully improved her own flock through the Shropshire Breed Improvement Scheme.
May is the month we shear our sheep – or rather we have them shorn! Each year, we promise ourselves it will be less chaotic, and we will be very prepared and organised. So, we brought the sheep into the shed while it was dry, because, of course, you cannot shear wet sheep), made a holding pen and a further small ‘feeding pen’, so that there was a constant supply of sheep to the shearer. It all worked very smoothly, though as the ‘fleece roller’ I always find a backlog of fleeces piling up faster than I can roll them and pack them in the woolsack!
As they left the shearing shed, we treated all the sheep and lambs with a ‘pour-on’, which gives long-lasting (16 weeks in the case of the product we use) protection against fly-strike. Job done.
There’s much baa-ing and frantic rushing around as the newly shorn ewes and lambs reunite, and, I have to say, the naked sheep do look very comical!
There’s much baa-ing and frantic rushing around as the newly shorn ewes and lambs reunite, and, I have to say, the naked sheep do look very comical!
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