A lot of pedigree sheep breeders will already be well into their breeding season, and the rams, having done their work for the year, will be back in their bachelor paddocks with their happy memories! But for most of us, the idea of abandoning the Christmas turkey for a stint in the lambing shed has limited appeal!
We lambed in mid-April last year, and I must say, it suited us perfectly. So this year we put our ewes onto our best pasture in the last week of September – aiming for a condition score of 3.5 (for optimum ovulation and implantation) within 6 weeks, at which time they will be joined by our handsome ram, Kinky. He was put onto good grass to bring him gradually up to a score of 4, which will ensure he has good firm testicles (ie. fertility) and libido! He only has 12 ewes to serve, so he doesn’t need to be too fit, but we do need him to be keen enough to serve them all during their first cycle so that all our lambs are born closely together – this makes lambing a joy, not a nuisance as it was in our first year when lambing 12 ewes took 6 weeks!
This year’s lambs have done tremendously well – the best we’ve ever produced, and this makes it even harder than usual to select the first batch to go off for slaughter. As we leave the ram lambs entire (uncastrated), they grow quickly during the first few months, producing a very fine, lean carcase. So by 20-22 weeks they are well up to our target weight of between 40-42kgs. The ones that aren’t good enough to retain for breeding have already gone, and will soon be filling our customers’ freezers. We’ve kept the two best ram lambs; as we lamb late, they won’t be ready for breeding purposes this year, but by next spring they will look magnificent!
We’ve decided to keep all this year’s ewe lambs on farm over the winter, which means we can see how they develop as potential breeding stock. Any that aren’t up to our specification will then go as hogget, which has been given the ‘thumbs up’ by all our customers.
No comments:
Post a Comment