General sheep thread

sheepfarmer92

Unreal, they have a great system in place, need to be very well set up for all them quads and plenty of help!

eire23

rangler1 wrote: »

Unreal number of lambs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uQUEMIbL78

Have over 30 pets here and thought that was a lot! When they are weaned of mik do they keep them in on ad lib meal or let them out?

razor8

rangler1 wrote: »

Unreal number of lambs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uQUEMIbL78

I wonder what his mortality rate is?

rangler1

razor8 wrote: »

I wonder what his mortality rate is?

All the figures are on this weeks journal, there seems to be five at the lambing of 330 ewes, we've about 400 lambed here in march with a student for a fortnight, so they were well staffed and they had family help as well.
They've reduced sheep in the last couple years to increase tillage.....can't see the wisdom in that though

arctictree

I've a neighbor with over 900 ewes lambing. I think he must love hardship.

Surely with all these numbers, it just depresses the price of lamb?

Buford T. Justice XIX

arctictree wrote: »

I've a neighbor with over 900 ewes lambing. I think he must love hardship.

Surely with all these numbers, it just depresses the price of lamb?

I might have spent a week lambing ewes there, if it's the same place. Some education for me tbh, coming from never being near a ewe:)

Is it CH place, by any chance?

Username John

arctictree wrote: »

I've a neighbor with over 900 ewes lambing. I think he must love hardship.

Surely with all these numbers, it just depresses the price of lamb?

It depends on your view...

In one way - would you not say tis lads with a smaller number of sheep must be the lads that love the hardship

If you had 900 ewes, you might have 1500 lambs, depending on your debt, and efficiency - but there is the potential there for some good $$$

If you have 50 ewes, you are very much limited in how much $$$ you will make.

So the lad with a smaller number of ewes, must be doing it for some other reason than $$$ - is the reason hardship

sheepfarmer92

Nothing wrong with keep large numbers of ewes, im farming fulltime with my father at home, i was working off farm and hated it, 4 or 500 ewes wouldnt keep two of us full time, we are well set up and 1200 ewes along with ewe lambs on top of that is a 3 day week for the rest of the year, very busy at lambing for about 4 weeks but nearly finished now and will be finished in 2 weeks once you keep things simple theres not much hardship

Oldira

Username John wrote: »

It depends on your view...

In one way - would you not say tis lads with a smaller number of sheep must be the lads that love the hardship

If you had 900 ewes, you might have 1500 lambs, depending on your debt, and efficiency - but there is the potential there for some good $$$

If you have 50 ewes, you are very much limited in how much $$$ you will make.

So the lad with a smaller number of ewes, must be doing it for some other reason than $$$ - is the reason hardship

Because the lad with 50 one day dreams of being the lad with 500. I know thats why I have gotten into sheep. If it was just for the couple of thousand profit I would keep at the day job. Dreams have a lot to answer for!

ganmo

One issue with small flocks is that once they have a big enough group of lambs to make it worth while to the mart the first ones are over fat

kk.man

ganmo wrote: »

One issue with small flocks is that once they have a big enough group of lambs to make it worth while to the mart the first ones are over fat

Why go to mart as some people have a factory agent more than willing to collect them or u are a short drive to one?...pointless spending a day in a mart for a part timer!.
.some would even argue a full timer

greysides

connolly18 wrote: »

lads i need some advice with a lamb he is a very big lamb and i had to pull him from the ewe and i have him alright and all now i just need him to stand but he has no energy is there anything i can give him

Calpol for pain relief has been used........

stantheman1979

Sheep are hardship no matter how many you have lol There is often less work with big numbers as they will usually have a good set up compared to the fella with 50. The lad with 50 still has to put on his boots and go check them during the night so you may as well have 10 ewes lambing as the fella with losing sleep for the one. Lambing goes on for a month on most farms regardless of how many you have so You may as well have decent numbers and try make a few quid outta them.

Lambman

Lambing nearly finished here waiting on a few stragglers now just.... my question is I usually keep triplets on the ewes till a ewe lambs with a single but its days between lambings at this stage so the triplets are on the ewes a week now and look till be flying maybe when they go till the field might be a different story? Question is what is the pros and cons on this..? Pros less labour for me and less cost for me cons more stress on ewe 3 lambs be slower till finish...? Anyone have any input?

IH784man

Lambman wrote: »

Lambing nearly finished here waiting on a few stragglers now just.... my question is I usually keep triplets on the ewes till a ewe lambs with a single but its days between lambings at this stage so the triplets are on the ewes a week now and look till be flying maybe when they go till the field might be a different story? Question is what is the pros and cons on this..? Pros less labour for me and less cost for me cons more stress on ewe 3 lambs be slower till finish...? Anyone have any input?

Put all the triplets together and don't be scared of meal

connolly18

at what age can u give lambs cobalt b12

connolly18

lads i have a lamb here and his leg has swollen up like a balloon could i give him a shot of alimiycin

ganmo

Yes, sounds like it might be a bad case of joint ill

White Clover

If joint ill, noroclav would be the one to use.

connolly18

i got hold of the lamb and its strawberry foot root what is my best option now

Green farmer

Have all white faced x breed ewes. Have put a llyen, Charley and texel Rams to them. no problem identifying the Charley lambs but the lines are slightly more blurred with the texel and llyens. The llyens coats are more open then there texels, but finding the faces of both can be quite Similiar. Any tips as to positively distinguish them apart. Next year might change the texels to hampshires to avoid this .

Oldira

Lambman wrote: »

Lambing nearly finished here waiting on a few stragglers now just.... my question is I usually keep triplets on the ewes till a ewe lambs with a single but its days between lambings at this stage so the triplets are on the ewes a week now and look till be flying maybe when they go till the field might be a different story? Question is what is the pros and cons on this..? Pros less labour for me and less cost for me cons more stress on ewe 3 lambs be slower till finish...? Anyone have any input?

I am leaving my triplets on the ewes this year. I have them seperated from the rest and the ewes are getting 1.5kg of nuts per head a day. So far so good and the lambs are flying. Just keeping an eye that the ewes dont find it too hard. It definitely beats keeping pets. Will introduce some meal for the lambs when the are a little older.

Plenty of research in Teagasc in Athenry on rearing triplets on the ewes and once ewes are properly fed it turns out to be more profitable than hand feeding.

farawaygrass

Doing the same. And have the creep feeding out too, thought they bearly picking.

Lambman

Think I might do the same ended up with 1 in 5 ewes having triplets this year there all still inside so won't be hard till put them out together and feed them meal... take it yous introduce creep as early as possible? What would yous creep small pellets or a munchy mix? nothing worse than 2 many pets running about the place.!

IH784man

Have a bought in ewe I want to sell in the mart next week along with others,I see she has 1 tag missing,she has the round circle tag in her right ear but no tag in the left.
Looking at the ewes that were in the same group they have a mart/factory tag in them I think.
What do I need to do here to sell her,can she keep that tag and sell her or put one of my tags in her,I only have mart/factory tags.

sea12

IH784man wrote: »

Have a bought in ewe I want to sell in the mart next week along with others,I see she has 1 tag missing,she has the round circle tag in her right ear but no tag in the left.
Looking at the ewes that were in the same group they have a mart/factory tag in them I think.
What do I need to do here to sell her,can she keep that tag and sell her or put one of my tags in her,I only have mart/factory tags.

You need an eid set of tags for her. You can order in batches of 10 of mullinshone. Take out the existing one put n the replacement and put it in your register book.

It has been known for ewes to lose the tag on the way to the mart you knowðŸ˜

IH784man

sea12 wrote: »

It has been known for ewes to lose the tag on the way to the mart you knowðŸ˜

Yes that must have been what will happen

J.O. Farmer

Green farmer wrote: »

Have all white faced x breed ewes. Have put a llyen, Charley and texel Rams to them. no problem identifying the Charley lambs but the lines are slightly more blurred with the texel and llyens. The llyens coats are more open then there texels, but finding the faces of both can be quite Similiar. Any tips as to positively distinguish them apart. Next year might change the texels to hampshires to avoid this .

Don't run the texel and llyen ram together. Use different colour raddles if you want to swap them about.
Based on the colour of the raddle you should know which ram tipped the ewe last.
Make sure that you have a different colour mark up to lambing in case the ram raddle fades.
I'm guessing you want to keep the llyen ewe lambs as replacements. Get an ear notcher and notch the ears of the llyen lambs when letting them out. Then when in doubt next summer look at the ear.
This obviously won't work if you want to run all ewes and rams as a single flock for mating but if you can split even in 2 or keep the texel and llyen separate some other way it should work.

Green farmer

Ya, want the llyen replacements alright. You'd be surprised how similiar looking they can be. I'll tweak the system next year.

J.O. Farmer

Green farmer wrote: »

Ya, want the llyen replacements alright. You'd be surprised how similiar looking they can be. I'll tweak the system next year.

I've charolaois off a mixture of ewes, mules zwartbles, hornys, suffolks all crossbred ewes and you'd be doing well to know it was a charolais ram. He was PBR so full bred.
I'm not looking to keep ewe lambs as my flock is small but I can see how you'd have problems.