November 2014

The beautiful autumn colours hung on through most of November in our corner of Gloucestershire, looking slightly incongruous against the summer flowers that were still in bloom. But it was nice to be out in the garden in shirtsleeves, in this, the warmest November on record.

Dino the tup spent just under 3 weeks with the ewes, during which time he enthusiastically marked each one. At the end of the first 9 days we changed his raddle colour from red to green (always a fun job, separating an amorous ram from his ewes!), so some of the ewes – those that didn’t ‘take’ during the early part of their first cycle – are now sporting very colourful rear ends. The plan is to change the raddle colour at the end of their first cycle, at 17 days, then one further time, and any ewes that are marked for a third time are more than likely barren – or we will have some annoyingly late lambs. All this is explained in our Expert Article by Chris Lewis, so if you are in any confusion – this is where to go for clarification!

We’ll have the ewes pregnancy scanned between 80-90 days (you can scan as early as 40 days). There are a number of good management reasons that make it very worthwhile taking the guesswork out of lambing, and these are all covered in the Sheep on Your Smallholding series in Programme 3 – “The Breeding Flock”.

Pregnancy scanning can also alert you to flock infertility or abortion problems if a high proportion scan as barren. We’ve never had a problem with ewes aborting *touch wood* and a couple of years ago had the flock blood-tested for Toxoplasmosis (all clear). We keep a ‘closed-flock’ so the risk of Enzootic abortion is minimised, but, as domestic cats can transmit Toxo, all flocks are potentially as risk.

Most of this year’s spring-born lambs have gone off for slaughter by now, apart from the ones we’ve ear-marked to join our breeding flock next year. We have to be very realistic as a pedigree breeder, unless they are exceptional, they won’t find a buyer. Sadly, although we had some really super ram lambs, they’re just not up to ‘champion’ standard, which means a trip to the abattoir.

I’ve had many discussions about keeping entire ram lambs destined for meat production, and the question of ‘ram taint’ is often raised. We’ve never castrated our ram lambs. It requires careful management – separating them from the ewe lambs at weaning, making sure we have good fencing, and sending them for slaughter within 12 months of birth, or before they show obvious signs of sexual maturity. We’ve never had any problem with rams fighting, or with ‘ram taint’. In fact, “a significant proportion of male lambs slaughtered in the UK are entire”, according to the Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC), who in their 2008 Report on the Implications of Castration and Tail Docking for the Welfare of Lambs, recommend that, where management standards are sufficiently high, male lambs are left entire on welfare grounds.

It’s been a good year for growing lambs this year (lots of grass and sunshine) so the lambs that have gone for slaughter have been more or less spot on our target liveweight of 42kg, which gives a carcass weight (deadweight) of around 18kg (ie. less head, entrails, skin, etc.). A couple of years ago I went on an EBLEX (www.eblex.org.uk) ‘Live to Dead’ event organised for farmers. The day started with an assessment of lambs ‘on the hoof’, graded by the ‘EUROP’ scale, which judges conformation and depth of fat. This is critically important for farmers producing commercial lambs, and very interesting for anyone aiming to produce good quality eating lamb. Later, we were given the opportunity to assess the finished carcass, and see how accurate our original grading was – very interesting and worthwhile!

If you’re planning to produce lamb, it’s essential to know how to select a good lamb for slaughter, nice and meaty without too much fat (and by the way, be firm but gentle or you will bruise the carcass):

• Feel around the base of the tail (dock) – you should be able to feel the individual vertebrae (bones) using moderate pressure
• Feel across the loin (where the body narrows in front of the hip bones) – you’ll feel the spine at the top and the transverse processes, which project sideways from the spine, about a hand’s width to either side – have a picture of two nicely covered loin chops side by side in your mind, and you’ll get the idea!
• The ribs will have a soft covering of fat, but you should be able to feel them individually
• Check the brisket (breast) – it should be firm with no more than a finger’s pinch of fat

And finally, if you want to maximise your income from your lamb enterprise, our new DVD release “A Guide to Sheep Butchery” gives you a complete step-by-step guide from selection to plate!

Carole Youngs of The Smallholder Series has written a thought-provoking article for the winter edition of Practical Sheep, Goats & Alpacas magazine, about how to breed and manage sheep in the most environmentally friendly way.