Feeding or selling light lambs?

eorna

Have few 30-33kg lambs.. Are they worth feeding? Or better off selling as stores?
The heavier ones are on creep feeder..

roosky

If you go to the teagadc website there is a store lamb calculator that should answer that question for you

Username John

eorna wrote: »

Have few 30-33kg lambs.. Are they worth feeding? Or better off selling as stores?
The heavier ones are on creep feeder..

I sold all mine last week... They were around the 33kg average...

I could have fed some of em on, but unless you have grass for em for the next few months, I don't think it's worth it...
You could feed em silage / hay - but I'm not sure how the costs would stack up? (Plus i wouldn't have had enough to get through a bale of silage quick enough)

So what's your grass situation? If you had the grass for em, and give em ration every day, they'd come on away.
33kg now, and you'd want em to be the most of 50kg in March, you'd want to keep em moving at a kg / week. Do you know how they're doing over the last few weeks?

eorna

Grass for ewes, lambs finished meal ad lib.. Threw the light ones with the rest as no chance going to mart.. So see how they go..
The handiest choice for me..
If they finish at 40-42 kg at 48% killout in a few weeks sure that b grand.. The price should improve too.
What did your 33 kg lambs make john?

fanadman1

eorna wrote: »

Grass for ewes, lambs finished meal ad lib.. Threw the light ones with the rest as no chance going to mart.. So see how they go..
The handiest choice for me..
If they finish at 40-42 kg at 48% killout in a few weeks sure that b grand.. The price should improve too.
What did your 33 kg lambs make john?

Must be very good types for you to be thinking on killing at 40-42kg in kill nothing under 50kg here

eorna

Very small framed lambs( runty type) will b doing well to get to 42..
Is only a handful of them so not that bothered either way..
Normal size lambs go at higher weights alright..
They are charX

rangler1

eorna wrote: »

Very small framed lambs( runty type) will b doing well to get to 42..
Is only a handful of them so not that bothered either way..
Normal size lambs go at higher weights alright..
They are charX

When the lambs are on ad lib there's no real financial advantage in going to higher weights, like you we just feed them to get to fat score 3 and let them off as long as they're over 18kg/dw, we lose 30c/kg for fat score 4s, which happens if they're too long ad lib.....it's too late in the year now to be giving them time to grow.

fanadman1

eorna wrote: »

Very small framed lambs( runty type) will b doing well to get to 42..
Is only a handful of them so not that bothered either way..
Normal size lambs go at higher weights alright..
They are charX

Big difference in them and the blackfaced lambs I do be killing I fond there's no great kill out unless we drive them to higher weights. Another thing is that they won't run in to being over fat near as fast as the charX you are feeding.

Green farmer

fanadman1 wrote: »

Big difference in them and the blackfaced lambs I do be killing I fond there's no great kill out unless we drive them to higher weights. Another thing is that they won't run in to being over fat near as fast as the charX you are feeding.

Out if curiosity, never had any here, but often see the blackface stores for sale. Would they take more feeding then a lowland ( both same start out weight ) to put on weight ? If you bought a few lowlands and a few black faces and feed them the same, would you see any difference financially at the end if you wanted to k.o in factory at 22kg ?

Cran

sent father off with stores for elderly uncle today, 39 & 40kg made 88 and 87 euros. I thought they weighed very well, but would say money in them for feeder as well. Sent some cull ewes to make a load of it and made 94, Lleyns and Mules great price....

orm0nd

saw 40kgs clean lambs €95 ,, most like top price per kg


very lively trade for 35 to 40 kgs

as Cran says most likely will be a touch in them for the finishers, but will need a price lift to ensure

eg. 50 to 55 kgs making €100- €105

only prices over 105 were nice quality ewe lambs catching a farmer's eye

saw mule ewes making €102 (well into their pension) wouldnt come near it in the factory

MayoAreMagic

Green farmer wrote: »

Out if curiosity, never had any here, but often see the blackface stores for sale. Would they take more feeding then a lowland ( both same start out weight ) to put on weight ? If you bought a few lowlands and a few black faces and feed them the same, would you see any difference financially at the end if you wanted to k.o in factory at 22kg ?

Im sure I read a study about it before, where they compared the two and the growth rate for certain groups was identical. They were grouped on weight. It was surprising, even the ones where the crossbred lambs were outperforming the blackface were closer than I would have expected them to be. Think it was something to do with the blackface lambs coming from bad ground and having a burst of growth in the superior conditions, where the crossbred lamb is used to the grass and meal.

fanadman1

MayoAreMagic wrote: »

Im sure I read a study about it before, where they compared the two and the growth rate for certain groups was identical. They were grouped on weight. It was surprising, even the ones where the crossbred lambs were outperforming the blackface were closer than I would have expected them to be. Think it was something to do with the blackface lambs coming from bad ground and having a burst of growth in the superior conditions, where the crossbred lamb is used to the grass and meal.

That's the big one I see I bought a lot of lambs at home and you can really pick out the lambs bought from men who grazed his on grass and would of got a lock of meal and the lambs gathered of the hill for me to look at. Hill ones take a lot of work at the beginning training them to eat and you need serous fencing to keep them in place but it really is worth it. I clip all my lambs on arrival as well many others do this

rangler1

Rightly or wrongly I've decided to put my lambs in today...there must be a fair portion of their feed going towards tolerating this weather, they look desperate this morning

Green farmer

rangler1 wrote: »

Rightly or wrongly I've decided to put my lambs in today...there must be a fair portion of their feed going towards tolerating this weather, they look desperate this morning

Will you leave them inside until finished ? You going to bed then on straw ?

fanadman1

rangler1 wrote: »

Rightly or wrongly I've decided to put my lambs in today...there must be a fair portion of their feed going towards tolerating this weather, they look desperate this morning

Met up with other lads feeding stores last night for a pint.
This was the main topic of conversation. Should they be housed. The general thought was they would be better on slats if the weather held up as it was. But today seems a bit better. So i moght try and squeeze another week out of it.

Green farmer

fanadman1 wrote: »

Met up with other lads feeding stores last night for a pint.
This was the main topic of conversation. Should they be housed. The general thought was they would be better on slats if the weather held up as it was. But today seems a bit better. So i moght try and squeeze another week out of it.

I like the idea of finishing them indoors, but you need to have a decent setup. a good external setup is probably better then a bad internal one.

I keep threatening to make up some timber slats some year.

rangler1

Green farmer wrote: »

I like the idea of finishing them indoors, but you need to have a decent setup. a good external setup is probably better then a bad internal one.

I keep threatening to make up some timber slats some year.

I thought you had a big shed for them, mine are just in on a straw bed and the creep feeder. I've been selling about twenty per week for the last four weeks so there's about 80 left now.
I got a sharp reminder about vaccinating last week....two dead the one morning, so they're vaccinated now. some of those diseases are in fresh clay so if land gets cut up, it can cause it,

fanadman1

Green farmer wrote: »

I like the idea of finishing them indoors, but you need to have a decent setup. a good external setup is probably better then a bad internal one.

I keep threatening to make up some timber slats some year.

Were all set up for indoor feeding. Mine is a cattle shed that i built timber slats up on to hold sheep it is very easy cleaned as all i have to do is blow a tanker load of water over them and all washs down inti the tank and draw it out with the tanker like cattle slurry. Its not perfect but it does me

Green farmer

rangler1 wrote: »

I thought you had a big shed

I got a sharp reminder about vaccinating last week....two dead the one morning, so they're vaccinated now. some of those diseases are in fresh clay so if land gets cut up, it can cause it,

I have a decent size shed / hay barn alright. The only downside is It's old and only has mostly clay floor, ( so straw here as well ) and not fully set up for sheep yet. But I'm doing a little bit of renovations each year, so looking forward to the day it's fully finished ,someday:D

eorna

They dont need anything too dramatic... roof, some sort of bedding, meal and fresh water.. Dont have mine in yet weigh them yesterday and thought they were doing fine... So will leave them out another while..

IH784man

fanadman1 wrote: »

Were all set up for indoor feeding. Mine is a cattle shed that i built timber slats up on to hold sheep it is very easy cleaned as all i have to do is blow a tanker load of water over them and all washs down inti the tank and draw it out with the tanker like cattle slurry. Its not perfect but it does me

Do the exactly the same thing here,we have the slats on the back part of the shed where the concrete is,set up the slats.what we do now as we have two sheds where lambs are in we lift the bin over with the front loader to the different shed each instead of taking carrying twice or more a day.

Green farmer

Anyone know how many ewes you can extra ewes you house by having slats. I read somewhere near 50% extra then on straw ?

sea12

Ranger what is your feeding regime now. Is it adlib meal. How much do they go through and what weight will they put on in a week

paddysdream

Last of the lambs here are on ad lib feeding.
The ones left range from 35/40 kgs(vast majority) to a few 15 to 25 kgs.These few the ones that got major setbacks ie ewe died at a stage where to bottle/foster the lambs was inpractiable,uncurable feet problems etc etc.
Ram lambs are on pretty bare ground.120 approx in the bunch with all bar 10 or 15 eating.On ad lib for the past 2 weeks after being given some in troughs to get them started.Filled feeder on Saturday morning and put 250 kg in again this morning.So roughly 1kg per head per day.
Ewe lambs on good grass(for this time of year anyways.)Approx 150 of them and filled feeder Sat morning as well and took about 200 kgs this morning.
Were dosed 2nd November.Not dirty but poor thrive and FEC showed very high burden.Previously dosed begining of October and post dose FEC showed it worked well at that time.Think October count was 800 pre dose whilst one in November was 1350.In fairness last lot of samples were from dirtiest/runniest lambs in both bunches whilst earlier ones were a fair mixture.
They are getting an intensive lamb coarse ration and thrive /condition seems to be excellent at the moment but the scales tomorrow will tell me better.Last lambs to be sold off of grass went about 2nd week October and went down a good bit in the weights to kill (mainly ewe) lambs that had finished growing at that stage but were fleshy enough.
Price seems to be creeping steadily upwards at the moment.
Lost 3 lambs over the last 2 weeks.One was never going to make it but reckon the other two were victims of the vaccination wearing out.Usually sudden death of an otherwise haelthy lamb I put down to some clostridial disease.

rangler1

paddysdream wrote: »

Last of the lambs here are on ad lib feeding.
The ones left range from 35/40 kgs(vast majority) to a few 15 to 25 kgs.These few the ones that got major setbacks ie ewe died at a stage where to bottle/foster the lambs was inpractiable,uncurable feet problems etc etc.
Ram lambs are on pretty bare ground.120 approx in the bunch with all bar 10 or 15 eating.On ad lib for the past 2 weeks after being given some in troughs to get them started.Filled feeder on Saturday morning and put 250 kg in again this morning.So roughly 1kg per head per day.
Ewe lambs on good grass(for this time of year anyways.)Approx 150 of them and filled feeder Sat morning as well and took about 200 kgs this morning.
Were dosed 2nd November.Not dirty but poor thrive and FEC showed very high burden.Previously dosed begining of October and post dose FEC showed it worked well at that time.Think October count was 800 pre dose whilst one in November was 1350.In fairness last lot of samples were from dirtiest/runniest lambs in both bunches whilst earlier ones were a fair mixture.
They are getting an intensive lamb coarse ration and thrive /condition seems to be excellent at the moment but the scales tomorrow will tell me better.Last lambs to be sold off of grass went about 2nd week October and went down a good bit in the weights to kill (mainly ewe) lambs that had finished growing at that stage but were fleshy enough.
Price seems to be creeping steadily upwards at the moment.
Lost 3 lambs over the last 2 weeks.One was never going to make it but reckon the other two were victims of the vaccination wearing out.Usually sudden death of an otherwise haelthy lamb I put down to some clostridial disease.

1350 is a high FEC count for lambs that are only dosed a month, ours are taking 5 - 6 weeks to get to 500
Lambs here are eating 1kg/day and I'd expect them to be putting on 2kg/week, their killout goes up as well, Its hard to know what they're putting on at the moment because it's hard to know what to allow for the wet fleeces but they are doing well
Now that they're in and dry it'll be easier to get accurate weights

rangler1

Green farmer wrote: »

Anyone know how many ewes you can extra ewes you house by having slats. I read somewhere near 50% extra then on straw ?

Here's a link, from this it looks to be about 10% extra. To have enough trough space is usually the biggest problem

http://www.teagasc.ie/newsletters/2009/sheep-200901.pdf

paddysdream

rangler1 wrote: »

1350 is a high FEC count for lambs that are only dosed a month, ours are taking 5 - 6 weeks to get to 500
Lambs here are eating 1kg/day and I'd expect them to be putting on 2kg/week, their killout goes up as well, Its hard to know what they're putting on at the moment because it's hard to know what to allow for the wet fleeces but they are doing well
Now that they're in and dry it'll be easier to get accurate weights

The ram lambs would be on a field beside the yard which has sheep only on it for prob. 11 months of the year.Ewes before,during and after lambing and the cull ewes grazed there before being sold so presume worm burden would be much higher.This, plus the fact that only sampled very liquid dung should account for the very high FEC.The previous doses worked according to the post dose test.
Find that I usually get a late flush of worms here in September and assumed that the October dose would have caught it but maybe with all the mild weather and plentyness of grass this year it either occured later or maybe a second time.

rangler1

paddysdream wrote: »

The ram lambs would be on a field beside the yard which has sheep only on it for prob. 11 months of the year.Ewes before,during and after lambing and the cull ewes grazed there before being sold so presume worm burden would be much higher.This, plus the fact that only sampled very liquid dung should account for the very high FEC.The previous doses worked according to the post dose test.
Find that I usually get a late flush of worms here in September and assumed that the October dose would have caught it but maybe with all the mild weather and plentyness of grass this year it either occured later or maybe a second time.

Just shows you, you have to be on top of your job all the time.
We've more worms this year too, but it usually comes with a mild back end such as this year. We'd often do separate worm counts on the same group, ie one sample runny and the other sample firm and very seldom would get any difference

Green farmer

paddysdream wrote: »

The ram lambs would be on a field beside the yard which has sheep only on it for prob. 11 months of the year.Ewes before,during and after lambing and the cull ewes grazed there before being sold so presume worm burden would be much higher.

Find that I usually get a late flush of worms here in September

Having cull ewes in the field would actually reduce the worm burden, as they take in a lot of worms but leave only a few out, due to a lifetime of building up resistance.

I find sept / oct the worst time of year here for worm burden also. I going to try and run old ewes on ground lambs were on previous year, if possible

ganmo

I brought 2 lambs to the dvo a few years ago to see what killed them and they came back with worm burden, think it was this time of year too