Pregnancy
scanning is one of the key indicators of our flock performance for the
year: it informs us how well our sheep are performing, both the ram and
ewes, as well as how effective our flock management is. It’s not just a
snapshot in time, as conception rates depend on so many influencing
factors throughout the year, including the weather, the individual’s
nutritional status, as well as their general level of fitness. But the
key factor is management – my job!For a full-time farmer, whose livelihood depends on the next crop of lambs, a good or bad scanning result means the difference between making a profit or a loss for the year. For us, our flock makes a good contribution to the household income, but we don’t have enough land to run a flock of a size that would provide a living. Nevertheless, we try to employ ‘best practice’ in all we do, and aim for our flock to be at least as productive as any commercial farmer would wish for. So this year’s scanning result of 162% was quite a disappointment – and an indication that our flock management was failing to achieve the results we would wish for – although of the 13 ewes, only one was ‘empty’. By comparison, in previous years we have achieved between 177-200%.
It
didn’t take too much navel-gazing to arrive at the reason. Although all
the ewes were in good condition – BCS3 – 3.5 at tupping, full-mouthed
and with sound udders and feet, it has to be admitted that some are
getting a little long in the tooth. All our current ewes are homebred,
with fresh genes brought in by a new ram every two years, but our older
ewes are now in their eighth year and there is a great deal of evidence
that a ewe’s fertility, as well as her ability to rear lambs, peaks at
around the age of 3, and declines thereafter. Keeping older ewes not
only means fewer lambs, it can also mean more problems in the lambing
shed; so why, I hear you asking, keep the older ewes?!Certainly an element of sentimentality, but – in my defence, they were fit, tried and tested ewes … who may have been ‘around the block’ perhaps once too often.
So, self-recriminations aside, here are our scanning results, with last year’s alongside:
EWE (age)
|
2014 SCAN RESULT
|
2013 LAMBING
|
601 (8)
|
TWINS
|
TWINS
|
602 (8)
|
TWINS
|
TRIPLETS
|
608 (8)
|
SINGLE
|
SINGLE
|
609 (8)
|
TRIPLETS
|
TRIPLETS
|
665 (6)
|
SINGLE
|
SINGLE
|
669 (6)
|
SINGLE
|
TRIPLETS
|
917 (5)
|
TWINS
|
SINGLE
|
10 (4)
|
TWINS
|
SINGLE
|
20 (4)
|
SINGLE
|
SINGLE
|
42 (3)
|
TWINS
|
SINGLE
|
44 (3)
|
EMPTY
|
TWINS
|
52 (3)
|
TWINS
|
TWINS
|
54 (3)
|
SINGLE
|
SINGLE
|
Interestingly, it is still our older ewes that are proving to be just as prolific as the younger ones – but, as every shepherd knows, you don’t count your lambs before they’re safely out in the field eating grass!
The
poet Frederick Langbridge once wrote, “Two men look out through the
same bars: one sees the mud, and one the stars.” Well, for the past six
months I have been seeing the mud and I think it’s about time the rain
stopped and gave us all a glimpse of the stars!Meanwhile, rather than allow our energetic (and in the case of Jamesey, ‘The Destroyer’, downright destructive) horses trash all our deeply muddy fields, we decided to sacrifice our 3-acre Rickyard paddock. It now resembles the Somme, which is appropriate in this Great War centenary year.
I’m
planning to read my way through the works of the Dymock Poets from this
period: Robert Frost, Lascelles Abercrombie, Edward Thomas, Rupert
Brooke, Wilfred Wilson-Gibson and John Drinkwater. Dymock is a lovely,
small village not far from here that has become famous through the
deeply moving war poems of these young men – as well as its meadows of
tiny native daffodils that turn the local fields into a sea of gold each
Spring.Photo: thedaffodilsociety.com
And finally, amidst the gloom of late December, I found all these little beauties blooming in our garden!
Wintersweet, Jasmine, Cyclamen, Snow Drop
