Athenry open day

Green farmer

See the open day is 21st June. Anyone going ?

farawaygrass

Green farmer wrote: »

See the open day is 21st June. Anyone going ?

Ya I have the day booked off work for it. Looking forward to it

davidk1394

Anything interesting up at it ?

Green farmer

davidk1394 wrote: »

Anything interesting up at it ?

From reading website, Focus on grass , genetics and comparing now the nz sheep are getting on vs Irish breeds, amongst other stuff. Appears to be the walking around farm listening to different speakers.

Green farmer

Going to stroll up there tomorrow and see what the story is.

orm0nd

Green farmer wrote: »

Going to stroll up there tomorrow and see what the story is.

neither of us here has a hope of getting there, if you get a chance would you throw an eye on the the NJ suffolks and just give your opinion

rangler1

Green farmer wrote: »

Going to stroll up there tomorrow and see what the story is.

I wasn't going to go, but neighbour asked me to go with him so will see you there

razor8

Heading over too

davidk1394

Any good ? Too busy here to go

Green farmer

Pics of the New Zealand ewes in field and Rams in shed. Tbh looked average enough, but they say initial results suggest the (nz Suffolk & texel )ewes only have to be assisted in 2.2% of lambings vs an average of 10% with the Irish ewes (Suffolk &texel) .

razor8

Found it a great day. Was a lot of information to take in and new material. Really enjoyed it

Thought the elite Irish rams looked terrible small & butty, surely better 5* rams in the country

Buford T. Justice XIX

Green farmer wrote: »

Pics of the New Zealand ewes in field and Rams in shed. Tbh looked average enough, but they say initial results suggest the (nz Suffolk & texel )ewes only have to be assisted in 2.2% of lambings vs an average of 10% with the Irish ewes (Suffolk &texel) .

Did anyone ask why they only bred the NZ lambs as hoggets after Tim Keady in the previous stand highlighted the importance of breeding ewe lambs rather than hoggets to increase output?

I meant to go back but forgot about it until I was on the way home:rolleyes:

rangler1

Buford T. Justice V wrote: »

Did anyone ask why they only bred the NZ lambs as hoggets after Tim Keady in the previous stand highlighted the importance of breeding ewe lambs rather than hoggets to increase output?

I meant to go back but forgot about it until I was on the way home:rolleyes:

What year was the first year the NZs lambed
Weren't the first lambs born in September of the year they were imported...they mightn't have been old enough

Buford T. Justice XIX

rangler1 wrote: »

What year was the first year the NZs lambed
Weren't the first lambs born in September of the year they were imported...they mightn't have been old enough

I think they had a couple of Texel and Suffolk hoggets in the last pen, next to the NZ ewes and lambs?

Green farmer

Don't know what I was expecting , but thought the nz sheep were very plain looking ( must admit I didn't even think the nz texel ewes looked like a texel) Afterwards was thinking how'd they preform in compassion to a llyen ewe ? Or one of our maternal ewes instead of a Suffolk. Suppose the way forward for the sheep industry is anything with four legs that can get to 20kg as soon as possible with the least amount of human effort. No money in prizewinners and ain't a beauty contest.

razor8

They buy replacements. I asked them why they don't breed their own replacements and Philip said they'll be doing that this year. A new guy has been assigned the task of gathering the data, he was in one of the sheds where ewes were rearing 3 lambs

Green farmer

Buford T. Justice V wrote: »

I think they had a couple of Texel and Suffolk hoggets in the last pen, next to the NZ ewes and lambs?

They had a handful alright. About 5-6 just to the left of pen and marked hoggets. (plain looking sheep also ). As rangler said though, they might have been to young to join or small to mate. The girl said their keeping all the lambs to try and expand the nz flock

Buford T. Justice XIX

Green farmer wrote: »

They had a handful alright. About 5-6 just to the left of pen and marked hoggets. (plain looking sheep also ) The girl said their keeping all the lambs to try and expand the nz flock

Wouldn't breeding them as lambs achieve that much faster though?

Buford T. Justice XIX

Green farmer wrote: »

Don't know what I was expecting , but thought the nz sheep were very plain looking ( must admit I didn't even think the nz texel ewes looked like a texel) Afterwards was thinking how'd they preform in compassion to a llyen ewe ? Or one of our maternal ewes instead of a Suffolk. Suppose the way forward for the sheep industry is anything with four legs that can get to 20kg as soon as possible with the least amount of human effort. No money in prizewinners and ain't a beauty contest.

I quite liked the NZ Texel in comparison to the Irish one. Much narrower head and shoulders so looking to be more easily lambed. Not show winning looks but looking more like commercial winners, tbh.

Green farmer

Buford T. Justice V wrote: »

I quite liked the NZ Texel in comparison to the Irish one. Much narrower head and shoulders so looking to be more easily lambed. Not show winning looks but looking more like commercial winners, tbh.

Ya, they were alright. But I suppose why would you even bother using one when the llyen / belclare etc are easily available.

Buford T. Justice XIX

Green farmer wrote: »

Ya, they were alright. But I suppose why would you even bother using one when the llyen / belclare etc are easily available.

They have a 30 year old breeding index for commercial traits, the others wouldn't have much information at all on their breeding other than a line of parents with little recording done.

The whole 2.2% lambing difficulty could be a game changer for many. Imagine not having to assist with 13% of your ewes lambing. Turns into a part time job then:)

Green farmer

It would be huge. I just would have liked if they added in another lot into the mix to know how the average maternal ewes we have in this country were performing against the Nz. They have plenty of belclare around the place on their farm. Not many commercial lads running big flocks of 100 % pedigree suffolks here on a commercial basis.

FarmerDougal

Picked up a few things yesterday good info. Overall message was get a prolific ewe at grass with 2 lambs from march on, nz type sheep were overlooked imo, 2.2% vs 13% lambing assists is a huge difference and the nz type outperformed top Irish in weight gain aswell, me thinks we should be more ruthless in culling and selection of breeding ewes in this country. If your trying to make a living from sheep and the top flocks have 40€net/ewe you need to manage a good lot without extra labour, handling even 10% at lambing is madness. Who give a damn what the sheep look like it's the bottom line that counts and the financials of the different systems was what was overlooked yesterday, no shortage of info on how to grow 10t of grass and keep 12ewes/ha but no follow through to the average farmers pocket

rangler1

FarmerDougal wrote: »

Picked up a few things yesterday good info. Overall message was get a prolific ewe at grass with 2 lambs from march on, nz type sheep were overlooked imo, 2.2% vs 13% lambing assists is a huge difference and the nz type outperformed top Irish in weight gain aswell, me thinks we should be more ruthless in culling and selection of breeding ewes in this country. If your trying to make a living from sheep and the top flocks have 40€net/ewe you need to manage a good lot without extra labour, handling even 10% at lambing is madness. Who give a damn what the sheep look like it's the bottom line that counts and the financials of the different systems was what was overlooked yesterday, no shortage of info on how to grow 10t of grass and keep 12ewes/ha but no follow through to the average farmers pocket

Philip Creighton said that there was a stand in the yard dealing with his trials finances, I didn't go near it but I'D always be around 40 euro/ewe net but I know I could do better,
Lambing difficulty here would be well under 5% with the Lleyns here so there's no mystery in how to reduce lambing problems, but isolating and penning after lambing takes work and time, but ground conditions and fragmentation rule out outdoor lambing, no amount of breeding will change that

Buford T. Justice XIX

Green farmer wrote: »

It would be huge. I just would have liked if they added in another lot into the mix to know how the average maternal ewes we have in this country were performing against the Nz. They have plenty of belclare around the place on their farm. Not many commercial lads running big flocks of 100 % pedigree suffolks here on a commercial basis.

I think the idea of the trial flock is to get a comparison going between Irish and NZ indexes.

I imagine there will be other trials going on once numbers of NZ sheep is big enough.

razor8

I thought the Irish 5* sheep looked terrible and their accuracies were as low at 44%. Have seen lots of better 5* sheep around at sales. When they gather more data it will hopefully improve things

roosky

Green farmer wrote: »

It would be huge. I just would have liked if they added in another lot into the mix to know how the average maternal ewes we have in this country were performing against the Nz. They have plenty of belclare around the place on their farm. Not many commercial lads running big flocks of 100 % pedigree suffolks here on a commercial basis.

the current trial is nz pedigree v Irish pedigree and Irish five star v Irish 1 star so they had to go with pedigree sheep for that reason.

Talking to them yesterday the next step is to compare them to commercial sheep

roosky

rangler1 wrote: »

Philip Creighton said that there was a stand in the yard dealing with his trials finances, I didn't go near it

Intentionally???

Cran

razor8 wrote: »

I thought the Irish 5* sheep looked terrible and their accuracies were as low at 44%. Have seen lots of better 5* sheep around at sales. When they gather more data it will hopefully improve things

I think 44% is decent enough at the moment for accuracy - no?

Don't really see the benefit of the NZ trial TBH, or maybe I'm missing something?

Texel are a maternal breed in NZ I believe and Suffolk a terminal, while here aim is to make them jack of all trades which really misses the point of NZ sheep farming.

Why not line them up against additional maternals such as Belclare / Lleyn / Mule for maternal traits and then include easier lambing terminal sires such as Charollais / Vedeen as well as irish Suffolks. Would including other breeds not give a better understanding of Irish sheep farming vs NZ rather than just 2 breeds?

rangler1

roosky wrote: »

Intentionally???

Ah yea, as I'm getting out of farming, it didn't really interest me, The results were very variable, the 14 ewes/acre came out on top the last two years and the others were ahead before that, 12 ewes/acre is probably consistently the best performer on their type of land.
Trial and error is really the only way to get the best stocking rate for a persons own farm, your farm has to be capable of producing a ton dm for every ewe that you have so if you can grow and utilise 12 tons DM/HA you can carry 12 ewes to the HA, at least Philip doesn't claim that every farm should be capable of doing it

Buford T. Justice XIX

One thing that puzzles me was the advice to let sheep eat 3 days in a paddock before moving them before they eat regrowth.

In dairting, they advise us to move cattle on every 2 days before they begin to eat regrowth.

Does the grass respond differently to different animals grazing it? Why does the advice change for the different animals?

rangler1

Buford T. Justice V wrote: »

One thing that puzzles me was the advice to let sheep eat 3 days in a paddock before moving them before they eat regrowth.

In dairting, they advise us to move cattle on every 2 days before they begin to eat regrowth.

Does the grass respond differently to different animals grazing it? Why does the advice change for the different animals?

Probably not to frighten the farmers...big difference in fencing sheep and cow, teagasc probably reckon they'd be doing well to achieve three day paddocks on sheep farms, they did emphasise yesterday that the quicker you graze it off the better. they were talking about 100 ewes on a 2 ha paddock and split it with a fence

Green farmer

roosky wrote: »

the current trial is nz pedigree v Irish pedigree and Irish five star v Irish 1 star so they had to go with pedigree sheep for that reason.

Talking to them yesterday the next step is to compare them to commercial sheep

Hopefully. Maybe next phase they'll consider including the Romney.

razor8

Buford T. Justice V wrote: »

They have a 30 year old breeding index for commercial traits, the others wouldn't have much information at all on their breeding other than a line of parents with little recording done.

The whole 2.2% lambing difficulty could be a game changer for many. Imagine not having to assist with 13% of your ewes lambing. Turns into a part time job then:)

Exactly. A bit of recording goes along way

razor8

Cran wrote: »

I think 44% is decent enough at the moment for accuracy - no?

Don't really see the benefit of the NZ trial TBH, or maybe I'm missing something?

Texel are a maternal breed in NZ I believe and Suffolk a terminal, while here aim is to make them jack of all trades which really misses the point of NZ sheep farming.

Why not line them up against additional maternals such as Belclare / Lleyn / Mule for maternal traits and then include easier lambing terminal sires such as Charollais / Vedeen as well as irish Suffolks. Would including other breeds not give a better understanding of Irish sheep farming vs NZ rather than just 2 breeds?

A lot of breeders have 90% accuracy for some traits in the uk for sheep bred on grass systems. They look a lot better animals than on display yesterday

To my knowledge there is also a lot of terminal nz texels bred which can effectively makes them a dual purpose ram

It would be very hard to compare them to mules seeing as there cross bred. So much variance in the bred. I'm sure you've seen that yourself in ballinrobe

My father always said a good ram of any breed has its place it's just finding them

Green farmer

Cran wrote: »

Don't really see the benefit of the NZ trial TBH, or maybe I'm missing something?


Why not line them up against additional maternals such as Belclare / Lleyn / Mule for maternal traits and then include easier lambing terminal sires such as Charollais / Vedeen as well as irish Suffolks. Would including other breeds not give a better understanding of Irish sheep farming vs NZ rather than just 2 breeds?

Think you nailed it cran. Why choose a terminal breed like Suffolk when your study is all about maternal qualities. Both stands before the nz were all focused on encouraging us to increase the maternal side of our farms, to run ewes with higher lambing rates. How can you study nz sheep without including the Romney ? Pretty sure it makes up 65 % of the nz flock.

Buford T. Justice XIX

Green farmer wrote: »

Think you nailed it cran. Why choose a terminal breed like Suffolk when your study is all about maternal qualities. Both stands before the nz were all focused on encouraging us to increase the maternal side of our farms, to run ewes with higher lambing rates. How can you study nz sheep without including the Romney ? Pretty sure it makes up 65 % of the nz flock.

Because there are few Romneys in Ireland? So using Romney sheep would serve no purpose in comparing the Irish figures with the NZ figures, just adding cost for no purpose?

Cran

Buford T. Justice V wrote: »

Because there are few Romneys in Ireland? So using Romney sheep would serve no purpose in comparing the Irish figures with the NZ figures, just adding cost for no purpose?

Thats a fair point but it doesn't take a genius to say look at Suffolks now and Suffolks 20 years ago and say it's gone down a wrong route if you want ease of management. There is probably more in common between Charollais and NZ suffolk TBH than local suffolks aside from head colour. Also from a maternal aspect neither NZ suffolk or Texel will offer decent lambing %.

Not convinced feels like when it's finished we ll be told NZ genetics are better for providing more live lambs with marginal carcass growth/kill out rate reduction. Then everyone will be saying NZ genetics are better while we ignore a large portion of our stock that might suit systems better such as Blackface, Cheviot, Lleyn, Belclare, charollais etc etc

Green farmer

lets be honest, one of the main areas their studying is the % of ewes that need assistance at lambing , so they choose two Irish pedigree breeds that can on occasions require c section's at lambing.

Buford T. Justice XIX

Cran wrote: »

Thats a fair point but it doesn't take a genius to say look at Suffolks now and Suffolks 20 years ago and say it's gone down a wrong route if you want ease of management. There is probably more in common between Charollais and NZ suffolk TBH than local suffolks aside from head colour. Also from a maternal aspect neither NZ suffolk or Texel will offer decent lambing %.

Not convinced feels like when it's finished we ll be told NZ genetics are better for providing more live lambs with marginal carcass growth/kill out rate reduction. Then everyone will be saying NZ genetics are better while we ignore a large portion of our stock that might suit systems better such as Blackface, Cheviot, Lleyn, Belclare, charollais etc etc

I wouldn't disagree with you there, I haven't gone near Suffolks in longer than that for that reason. One of my main reasons for going was to see them in the flesh and tbh I was impressed with them. Especially their heads which aren't massive yolks.

Also, half the national flock would be Suffolk crosses and a large proportion of what's left would be Belclare but, to get a comparison baseline, they have to use comparable breeds. I'm sure down the line there will be comparisons with other maternal breeds but there will have to be figures there for the NZ bloodlines v Irish ones before any comparison with the relatively small numbers of ewes from other breeds who don't have much in the way of figures available as yet.

Green farmer

Carrying on from what their doing in athenry, what's the story with ram seaman or full embyros ? Just say if you wanted to start your own flock of nz sheep , can you buy and implant embyros ? Is there a lot of paperwork or cost involved ? Is it cost prohibitive ? Out of curiosity really.

Ard_MC

https://www.teagasc.ie/media/website/publications/2017/Sheep-Open-Day_2017.pdf