Early lambing

Username John

Hello,

Am currently debating whether to put the ram with the sheep sooner rather than later this year. This would mean lambing around Christms / start of the new year.

Years ago, we used to do this, but more recently we had the sheep lambing later, around March time.

Would be interested in hearing peoples opinions on early lambing.

The biggest pro for me would be holidays. I am on holidays at Christmas anyways, so it would be handy in this respect.
Cons are more feeding, potentially worse weather...

Interested to hear how early lambing goes for anyone here, and how you setup the feeding / creep feeding. Does early lambing stack up cost wise, when the cost of creep (and additional time) is all added up?

Plus any comments in general on early lambing...

Thanks.

metalwood

i tried it last year didnt work out too well bought ram on 21st july and lat him straight out to see what would happen............was tippin away fine but lambing didnt start till 15 feb so maybe ewes werent ready so will wait till sept this year

Dunedin

metalwood wrote: »

i tried it last year didnt work out too well bought ram on 21st july and lat him straight out to see what would happen............was tippin away fine but lambing didnt start till 15 feb so maybe ewes werent ready so will wait till sept this year

you cannot just let out the ram and expect him to work away. for early lambs you either need to sponge or flush really well. the only way to flush well is to have your lambs sold early. you won't take a lamb off a ewe in june and expect her back in lamb in july - doesn't work like that.

when I had sheep, I sponged the ewes every 2nd year adn flushed them well the alternative year - lambs gone in april, Ram back out in july: would alwasy give the ewes cobalt (about 2 weeks before ram), put them on a very bare run and then try to let them out on to silage aftergrass with the Ram in Mid July: it always worked grand although iwth the flushing the lambing drags on a another week or two.



in the last couple of years, teh price has held up well in the weeks after Easter so it's prob not as crucial to have Easter lambs but I always found it better to have lambs gone by april so I had more grass fro cattle

snowman707

Dunedin wrote: »

you cannot just let out the ram and expect him to work away. for early lambs you either need to sponge or flush really well. the only way to flush well is to have your lambs sold early. you won't take a lamb off a ewe in june and expect her back in lamb in july - doesn't work like that.





in the last couple of years, teh price has held up well in the weeks after Easter so it's prob not as crucial to have Easter lambs but I always found it better to have lambs gone by april so I had more grass fro cattle

+1

I have listed in another thread why we moved to february lambing,


don't forget the rams as well !

for compact lambing early in the season rams need to be extremely fit, other wise your lamb crop will suffer ,

snowman707

a little off topic here but have just read Andrew Kinsella's article in to day's indo

nice to see a good informative article based on experience,

a change from the outdated articles in other publications, I think most of them are still using their leaving cert agri science text books for reference