future new sheep farmer !

arctictree

eire23 wrote: »

For arguments sake, say ya lost 1 lamb for every 12 ewes lambed. In a flock of 200 i think that works out at 16 lambs. At a minimum price of 80 euros a lamb thats nearly 1300 euro lost. And then ya might have more on top of that, it wouldnt be long adding up.

I agree that if its your main source of income then it probably makes sense to be checking them a few times at night. Would be good to have a helper also in this situation.

Conmaicne Mara

eire23 wrote: »

For arguments sake, say ya lost 1 lamb for every 12 ewes lambed. In a flock of 200 i think that works out at 16 lambs. At a minimum price of 80 euros a lamb thats nearly 1300 euro lost. And then ya might have more on top of that, it wouldnt be long adding up.

If you have a breed that lambs themselves, you get to keep the money and get sleep, as well as not paying a helper

Conmaicne Mara

I just found photos I saved off the shed I saw on another site. It has more ewes per pen that I remembered, looks to be about 20 per pen, but could be subdivided again. Looks a fantastic job.

Sheep breeder

There is a huge difference in the size of flock from a large flock to a small flock with all the things that are associated with lambing, and the same applies to lambing percentage from a 1.2 to a 1.9 flock as the more lambs to mind and hopefully sell at the end of the day it is about the bottom line figure, no point selling a big 48 kilo lamb when you could be selling two 42 kilo lamb from your ewe, it is easy to say little time minding ewes in a 35 or 11 ewe flock compared to a 300 ewe flock where you have to put the work in to get the money out.
Every year lambing is different with what was a problem last year not a problem this year,to my mind loosing a lamb to a fox is madness why not take care of the vermin before lambing when there is very little food available and spring lamb is off the menu.we lamb in doors and to loose a lamb is very hard to take and would not lamb out side for all the tea in china, easier to catch a ewe or foster a lamb inside than under the ditch.

Cran

Sheep breeder wrote: »

There is a huge difference in the size of flock from a large flock to a small flock with all the things that are associated with lambing, and the same applies to lambing percentage from a 1.2 to a 1.9 flock as the more lambs to mind and hopefully sell at the end of the day it is about the bottom line figure, no point selling a big 48 kilo lamb when you could be selling two 42 kilo lamb from your ewe, it is easy to say little time minding ewes in a 35 or 11 ewe flock compared to a 300 ewe flock where you have to put the work in to get the money out.
Every year lambing is different with what was a problem last year not a problem this year,to my mind loosing a lamb to a fox is madness why not take care of the vermin before lambing when there is very little food available and spring lamb is off the menu.we lamb in doors and to loose a lamb is very hard to take and would not lamb out side for all the tea in china, easier to catch a ewe or foster a lamb inside than under the ditch.

I've read this a couple of times and find it hard to agree with. I lamb 50 ewes inside and its a lot of work and losses ran just under 5% this year. I would have had to handle all these ewes for one reason or another, either to lamb or move pens. Only for these are pedigree not sure it would be worth it.....

I lamb 600 ewes outside (scan 1.85 include Hoggets), a different breed than what I lamb inside and have a well organised routine at this stage. Losses this year ran at about 5% outside as well, I had to catch 40 ewes who had difficulties for one reason or another, singles kept together for ease of adopting lambs onto them and all triplets removed adopted or on milk machine. I personaly believe ewe breed is of huge importance lambing out and cannot be underestimated when it comes to workload and lamb survival.

My land is dry and well sheltered so that helps hugely as can travel with jeep rather than quad at lambing. Would I consider bringing in some commercials to lamb Not unless I brought lambing back few weeks to spread workload or the weather got really bad TBH

rangler1

There's huge amount of work in having them in for the winter and I would love to be able to leave them out. I used to keep half of them out until lambing, but in November 2012 the farm became an absolute quagmire and only that I got the tunnel erected for them, there definitely wouldn't have been grass in 2013,
The farm is fragmented as well so lambs get a lot of moving in the first week.
It all depends on land type and stocking rate

Cran

rangler1 wrote: »

There's huge amount of work in having them in for the winter and I would love to be able to leave them out. I used to keep half of them out until lambing, but in November 2012 the farm became an absolute quagmire and only that I got the tunnel erected for them, there definitely wouldn't have been grass in 2013,
The farm is fragmented as well so lambs get a lot of moving in the first week.
It all depends on land type and stocking rate

Totaly agree with this, think if I was full time would have to bring them in for the winter as would need to increase stocking rate to survive.

AnFeirmeoir

Conmaicne Mara wrote: »

I just found photos I saved off the shed I saw on another site. It has more ewes per pen that I remembered, looks to be about 20 per pen, but could be subdivided again. Looks a fantastic job.

Great set up ... but shows you even in a state of the art setup .. theres room for some binding twine !

Conmaicne Mara

AnFeirmeoir wrote: »

Great set up ... but shows you even in a state of the art setup .. theres room for some binding twine !

There's always room for baling twine If I remember right, they can remove all of those pens etc. for mucking out by machine. Then they have a great big open space shed to use for whatever the rest of the year.

Username John

Just on the checking em at night, I used to do that, every 3-4 hours, so get up once most nights, maybe twice if I was feeling a bit lazy, and wanted to go back to bed the second time

This year I checked em before bed, if I thought one was very near lambing, I would check at night. Otherwise leave em for the night, and check em again close to first light.

It worked this year - but to say "not checking is better than checking" would be wrong, as I think there is a massive amount of luck in it. You could do everything right, and just be unlucky that one ewe that will have problems lambing, will start lambing at 3am... or she might wait til 7am when you are around the place...

On this lambing indoors or outdoors...
I think as has been said by a few posters - breed probably plays the biggest part in this discussion. If you have ewes that for the most part will lamb unaided, then minimum intervention is needed.

Once you have this, its prob about facilities & management.
Do you have facilities to bring the ewes indoors? (shed plus all the trimmings)
Do you have facilities / location / skills to lamb outdoors? (I imagine a dog is a much have here, plus good sheltry fields, way to bring em in such as quad / jeep, way to feed em outside if necessary etc)
Is your stocking rate very high, that you have to house em, to rest the land?

Next is probably preference? And maybe this is the biggest item...
What do you value more - a lamb that will be big at lambing, and grow like hell. Or a lamb that will be smaller, prob lamb easier, but maybe not grow as quick? (I know this raises an arguement of we all want bits of both - but IMO - you trade one item off another, so what you gain in easier lambing, you might lose elsewhere... nut we're back to breed again a bit here)
Even if you had all the necessary things to lamb outside, would you just prefer to lamb indoors (if you had all the sheds, etc)

How do you value your time? We all balance the time we spend watching them a bit differently, so we all value our time differently.
What breed do you prefer to work with? I like suffolky type ewes, cos they are what I know, and what I was raised with. They have a LOT fo faults, but I like em... I imagine some lads wouldnt have em for love nor money

One system isn't better than the other... One may be more profitable than others, but you need the setup for it, so hard to compare at times...

But I suspect all systems can be done badly...

AnFeirmeoir

Do ye think there's profit in sheep on rented land ??

Username John

AnFeirmeoir wrote: »

Do ye think there's profit in sheep on rented land ??

Maybe...

How much profit are you making on your own land?

Conmaicne Mara

Username John wrote: »

It worked this year - but to say "not checking is better than checking" would be wrong, as I think there is a massive amount of luck in it. You could do everything right, and just be unlucky that one ewe that will have problems lambing, will start lambing at 3am... or she might wait til 7am when you are around the place...

If you put the wrong sheep (not always "breed" as there are great variances within breeds) into the wrong system then of course there will be disaster. Which is why I suggested an easy lambing sheep to fit the system and not other sheep which require assistance.

Last year I had one lambing loss with a lamb smothered in the bag, this year no lambing loss, yet reading this thread it is being put forward that nearly every sheep would be feet to the sky in the place.

It's not true.

142% lambing this year, would have to look up last year, intend to improve again next year.

It's a matter of selecting the right sheep with the right traits, for the right system.

Dickie10

got a second big lamb near 30 kg dead in the field yesterday evening, anyone know what could be cause and if there is a lab in north east I could bring to get a check

Green farmer

Ask your vet, they'll need to ring ahead for you, to the nearest department lab. Cost me about 6-10 euro. There was some change recently as to how the labs operated, but I don't know what it was

Wonder if it's anything to do with the magnesium the lads were talking about here last week

razor8

got 2 in last week also and all done with heptavac P. will have to head to lab if another one goes stiff

razor8

Green farmer wrote: »

Ask your vet, they'll need to ring ahead for you, to the nearest department lab. Cost me about 6-10 euro. There was some change recently as to how the labs operated, but I don't know what it was

thats only change afaik, before you could just turn up a lab and request check but now your vet must ring them first, results are then sent to vet

Username John

Dickie10 wrote: »

got a second big lamb near 30 kg dead in the field yesterday evening, anyone know what could be cause and if there is a lab in north east I could bring to get a check

Feck - that's sickening...

Its hard to say what the cause is. Do you inject the ewes for clostridal (not sure of spelling) diseases, with Covexin or the likes?

We used to have the odd one or two die like that - perfect one day, dead the next. And it always seemed to be good, strong lambs. But when we started using covexin, it seemed to stop...
*I think* there may be a correlation between fast growing and more susceptible, but not sure...

Not sure this helps - may be unrelated, just my experience.

Hope you get to the bottom of it, and you get it sorted as its sickening to find em like that

EDIT : Given Razor's comments above re having given em heptavac P, and they still die-ing, really not sure my post helps...

rangler1

Dickie10 wrote: »

got a second big lamb near 30 kg dead in the field yesterday evening, anyone know what could be cause and if there is a lab in north east I could bring to get a check

We've had another clostridial in the last couple of years called sordellii and have had to change to vaccinating with covexin 10+ ovipast for pneumonia.
Did you dose for nemotodirus (sp)...that's a killer too

Dickie10

Would Nemotodirus not have them a bit dirty in the backend? does clostridial vaccination definitely solve these problems? went years without vaccinating with smaller numbers might start again

Green farmer

I heard that a sheeps greatest enemy is another sheep !!! The more sheep you have the more they seem to handball these bugs around.

On another note, found 2 ewes cast over on their sides in the last few days, very lucky to get to them in time !!!! Must be the weather and heavy coats or something .

rangler1

Dickie10 wrote: »

Would Nemotodirus not have them a bit dirty in the backend? does clostridial vaccination definitely solve these problems? went years without vaccinating with smaller numbers might start again

best idea is to see what the lab says....... if you haven't dosed for nematodirus or vaccinated for clostridial diseases, it could be any of those.

some info on nematodirus
http://scops.org.uk/alert_pdfs/NEMATODIRUSApril201204042012090139.pdf

Dickie10

whe I took over the farm there were just 30 ewes built up numbers last 3 years through buying in ewes and keeping a few ewe lambs every year, ewes were never vaccinated here and I dddint start never lost a lamb outside after say 6 weeks old til this year, I now have 82 ewes.interestingly it was two bought in ewes that two lambs were dead. I didn't like the idea of buying in ewes so bought a lleyn ram last sept to breed my own replacements. If I get another dead one I think il go down the vaccination route. or is it just a case of bigger numbers resulting in a bigger ratio of this type of sudden death?