Lamb thrive

Green farmer

How are lads lambs thriving at the moment ? I've mine on after grass, but find the thrive is slow and their getting very dirty here even through their well dosed. I think it's the amount of water in the grass ? Anyone else experiencing this ?

Username John

Green farmer wrote: »

How are lads lambs thriving at the moment ? I've mine on after grass, but find the thrive is slow and their getting very dirty here even through their well dosed. I think it's the amount of water in the grass ? Anyone else experiencing this ?

Yes...

But been that story all summer here almost (well, since July)

Altho I think I had a cobalt issue in the mix as well... Hopefully it was cobalt, and I have now rectified it, and my lambs will horse on weight (but I suspect that may not happen exactly like that )

Cran

Thrive been good here but its been very dry really compared to rest of the country, streams here dried up (until today i would say). April born lambs singles nearly all gone straight off the ewes just grass, most to heavy and another 30 lambs or so gone too which is about 2 weeks ahead of other years. Lambs weaned 3 weeks, those on grass seem to be doing ok but will be left alone for another 3/4 weeks I think and will know better then.

One thing I've taken from our STAP meetings is continuing daily weight gain after weaning, always been an issue with our late lambing system and lead to way to much concentrates being used to finish back end lambs for my liking. Two things done to try and improve dwg this over past year, first is bolus lambs rather than dosing as due to being part-time never kept on top of it. Second was sow some Tyfon in reseed for about half the lambs. Had lambs on tyfon in on Sat 3 weeks after weaning to remove replacement ewe lambs and their condition was unreal, couldnt get over how well they've done. Looking forward to seeing how they weigh in Sat week when I plan to take a load out of them.

Username John

Cran wrote: »

Thrive been good here but its been very dry really compared to rest of the country, streams here dried up (until today i would say). April born lambs singles nearly all gone straight off the ewes just grass, most to heavy and another 30 lambs or so gone too which is about 2 weeks ahead of other years. Lambs weaned 3 weeks, those on grass seem to be doing ok but will be left alone for another 3/4 weeks I think and will know better then.

One thing I've taken from our STAP meetings is continuing daily weight gain after weaning, always been an issue with our late lambing system and lead to way to much concentrates being used to finish back end lambs for my liking. Two things done to try and improve dwg this over past year, first is bolus lambs rather than dosing as due to being part-time never kept on top of it. Second was sow some Tyfon in reseed for about half the lambs. Had lambs on tyfon in on Sat 3 weeks after weaning to remove replacement ewe lambs and their condition was unreal, couldnt get over how well they've done. Looking forward to seeing how they weigh in Sat week when I plan to take a load out of them.

What bolus did you use Cran?

I used the animax cobalt bolus at weaning, but I wasn't too impressed with performance. Was v disappointed in fact.

sea12

Lambs poor thrive this year also. Gone dirty the last 2 weeks also. Got cobalt again and Worm dose and will dose them on Saturday and move them to some nice after grass.

rangler1

Username John wrote: »

What bolus did you use Cran?

I used the animax cobalt bolus at weaning, but I wasn't too impressed with performance. Was v disappointed in fact.

did you give the selenium and iodine bolus as well, also animax only supplies .6mg cobalt/day , lambs need 1mg/day, your grass mightn't be supplying any cobalt at all, they do recommend 2 boluses in bad deficiencies,
You need to be doing blood/liver tests....otherwise it's just guessing

Username John

rangler1 wrote: »

did you give the selenium and iodine bolus as well, also animax only supplies .6mg cobalt/day , lambs need 1mg/day, your grass mightn't be supplying any cobalt at all, they do recommend 2 boluses in bad deficiencies,
You need to be doing blood/liver tests....otherwise it's just guessing

No sel or iodine bolus. I don't think we have a iodine issue, nor selenium either. (Based on giving the ewes selenium before and thinking it didn't do much, not very scientific I know)

I though the bolus would meet their needs to be honest rangler. Giving em a drench now, will keep that into em and we'll see how they do.

Still debating whether to sell some store or not... Most likely will, just to be rid of em, and free up some grass for the ewes...

Green farmer

Rangler,
Is this the time of year that the strongyle worms are hatching out ? I think I had dirty lambs at the same time last year ?

rangler1

Green farmer wrote: »

Rangler,
Is this the time of year that the strongyle worms are hatching out ? I think I had dirty lambs at the same time last year ?

Yea, just after doing an FEC on ours and will have to dose this week, had to dag/crutch about 50 dirty ones last week, It's a good many years since I had so many dirty tails....all Lleyns.
You'll get worms in lambs from june onward

Cran

Username John wrote: »

What bolus did you use Cran?

I used the animax cobalt bolus at weaning, but I wasn't too impressed with performance. Was v disappointed in fact.

Animax but gave them a all three, also did about 100 with Mayo (twice so far) see if any difference in performance. Should know next week when weigh them if any difference in performance.

Bleating Lamb

Most of lambs sold here(forward stores) and are gone,have noticed lambs getting v dirty last fortnight but they couldn't be any other way with amount of rain falling!...worst affected lambs as always have Suffolk breeding in them.

Green farmer

rangler1 wrote: »

Yea, just after doing an FEC on ours and will have to dose this week, had to dag/crutch about 50 dirty ones last week, It's a good many years since I had so many dirty tails....all Lleyns.
You'll get worms in lambs from june onward

You'd be thinking you had some resistance issues, but in reality their probably just reconsuming high levels of worms in the grass after you drench. I've no scientific basis but something I was thinking about, I'm going to spread 2 tonne of lime/ acre soon. Just wondering would lime spreading cleanse or reduce a worm burden in a field ? Would it burn the eggs sitting on the grass leaf ? As a byproduct of realising ph in a field ?

Birdnuts

Green farmer wrote: »

I've no scientific basis but something I was thinking about, I'm going to spread 2 tonne of lime/ acre soon. Just wondering would lime spreading cleanse or reduce a worm burden in a field ? Would it burn the eggs sitting on the grass leaf ? As a byproduct of realising ph in a field ?

Don't think it would make much difference - worm eggs are pretty much bomb proof. Having problems all summer with thrive on my place in the West, but thats probably down to poor grass growth and the constant cold/wet conditions all summer down there with stock burning extra calories just maintaining any sort of condition.

Green farmer

Apologies for being up this old thread. Wondering how lads are doing with their lambs recently ? Find the lambs are gone dirty here in last week or so. Same thing happened at same time last year, even though their well dosed.

rangler1

Green farmer wrote: »

Apologies for being up this old thread. Wondering how lads are doing with their lambs recently ? Find the lambs are gone dirty here in last week or so. Same thing happened at same time last year, even though their well dosed.

,

It's a common problem this year, lambs are slow here too,
Wet weather is probably leaving them dirtier....ours are anyway.
Also a lot less this year so far through the lamb group, a lot of lambs to come still
so you're not the only one.
.5kg meal/day would help, but you probably don't want to hear that

Green farmer

rangler1 wrote: »

,

It's a common problem this year, lambs are slow here too,
Wet weather is probably leaving them dirtier....ours are anyway.
Also a lot less this year so far through the lamb group, a lot of lambs to come still
so you're not the only one.
.5kg meal/day would help, but you probably don't want to hear that

Funny ain't it, how the same issues rear their heads at the same time, year in , year out .

mcgiggles

We're finding our lambs dirty enough this last while, also very slow finishing.. we blamed it on late weaning, doing it part-time so the weeks just get away from us

orm0nd

was reading on another site that some folk got good results after dosing with Levafas Diamond, they were wondering if rumen fluke could be an issue or just the Levamisole working better,

thrive has been slow here all year, very little sun & whilst we're not getting heavy rain , the grass is constantly wet or damp

cow's milk solids back also

paddysdream

Lamb thrive was only average here all summer.Prob. 100 less lambs gone by end of July compared to other years.

Put it down to a serious grass shortage 6 to 8 weeks post lambing.Very hard to get them going after any stall.Don't creep any lambs here cause reckon most years its a poor return with the way price falls but maybe this year it would have been a good option.
Swings and roundabout's really.
Weaned prob. 3 weeks later than normal but since then lambs have really started to put on weight.Grass still very scarce due to lack of rain but what's there seems to be doing the trick.

Never been a big fan of rank green grass for sheep as it seems to run through them esp. if lots of N used.End up with dirty lambs with big bellies and a lack of flesh.

Have a few dirty lambs here but they are going as good as the rest and in some cases would be the best thriving one's.No worm burden in the majority.Tested this week and result of 50 with no fluke,cocci or nematadirous showing apart from 40 or 50 ram lambs grazing on a paddock beside the lambing shed's where ewes were on all spring.These had 800 with a touch of cocci and a few nematidirous so really needed something.Funny thing is that these were prob. the best thriving bunch of lambs in the last month.Then again find ram lambs are easy to finish once there are no ladie's present!
Cocci burden wasn't worthwhile dosing for as lambs at this stage would show no real effects with just a trace.

Dosed these with an ivermectin dose and will test again to see if it worked.All the lambs were last dosed 1st week of July with Cydectin so it seems to have worked pretty ok.
Got caught out a few years ago with an August dose that missed a late flush of worms.Assumed that it worked (bad idea) and only once thrive fell away totally did I decide to test.Lambs were rotten with high burden but turned inside out after a white dose.

Normally don't feed meal here until October onwards as price "usually" starts to rise at this stage and return will justify it.Also waste of time mealing a lot of small framed lambs as they will fatten but hard to put them into 20 plus kgs.Always have a few tail enders that are never going to come into anything much no matter how long they are eating so usually gather up all the scran after Christmas and kill regardless as these could have been on meal for 12 weeks and at that stage they are a money loosing proposition.A few will never come into 20kgs dead no matter what you do with them.

Siamsa Sessions

Mixed thrive with us too. Lambed in April and weaned last Saturday. Could have weaned earlier based on reduced daily weight gain when we weighed them two weeks ago, but we're part-time so didn't get around to it.

Our own lambs weren't too bad but stores we bought developed seriously mucky backsides. Dosed for coccidiosis and got some improvement but might give them a cobalt drench as well to try get them moving.

We upped numbers a fair bit so need to start shifting something soon now.

Ard_MC

Lambed in April, weaned on the 30th July. Picked out the small 1s and sold them. Rest are flying since, plenty grass as all the ewes turned back to the hill. Hope to start to sell a few from sept. All gone by mid Oct either finished or stores. As need the lowland for ewes for the tupping.