General sheep thread

I’d say it’s a bit early for clik yet. There will be no flys for a few weeks yet unless u don’t have handling facilities letting them off.

wow I was thinking mixing it 1:1, 5:1 would really make it stretch and affordable. Thanks 👍

not much more ya can do really in my opinion, keep going with the life aid and calcium. Try handling her soon to see if any progress but she just mightn’t be pushing

No she is too alert for meningitis. Gave her antibiotic too just incase

hi folks . Just a question. Have a lamb here born yesterday from a set of triplets which was fine till dismoring I found it very weak so I brought it inside and stomach tubed it and got it going . It now seems to have a scour which is seems to have traces of blood in it. I gave it some liquid aid and scour halt when I first noticed it but lamb seems quite weak . Expecting it to die . But curious to know has anyone ever seen a blood tainted scour in a Lamb before? Is it a bacterial infection or what ? Thanks for any feedback

And people wonder how parasites become immune to our medications...

It’s a bit late once he’s in the mart. Should be a fine for such antics. Could cost a farmer hundreds of euro to fix the problem

it seems it’s becoming a problem again

Got a fairly bad dose of it in my lambs this year, thought a few wouldn't recover from it. I only caught them once and used the bactakill orf paste. Gave a shot of penicillin to the really bad ones because I was afraid of a secondary infection and put out the tubby buckets. The lambs with the orf went mad for them and the ewes didn't go near them. A week later it had all pretty much cleared up. I'm putting a lot of it down to the buckets but it might not be them that did it either.

i have found metacam and oxytet quite good for bad orf, the pain relief in the metacam allows lamb to stay eating and fight the virus

Directly with the lab

Where is the 10000 in subs coming from ? Most be high value entitlements ? And also what is costing 2500? You will probably have to dig into your subsidy for the first few years for sure between building up stock numbers and improvements to land so your subsidies will be eatin into but if it’s a long lease and your will to put sweat into it for first few years .. then long term it would work . So go for it if you understand what I’m saying. If inputs go down back pre 2022 levels and finished lamb price stays in around the same price wise as last year . It is achievable to do okay out of it . But first few years is going to be grim. Best of luck

Its very difficult to predict sheep farming atm. You are getting the land at good value. If the present trend continues with sheep prices vrs costs (a fag box calculation) you will be subsidising your enterprise from your subs which in turn you are subbing these from your own money.

Times change so this could be all different this time next year but there is a huge exodus in my part of the country so that may help returns (we have been saying that for a good few years now). The fact that the factories can go to the UK on any given week and buy a few wagons to process here doesn't help. Shortage of sheep meat here might not translate into good prices because the market is determined by what France can pay (they import from Oceania too).

You might look at a small bit of Diary Calf to Beef in order to spread the risk IMHO.

What fertiliser would you put on a field requiring N and K

Soil results came back and 1 field has low k, everything else is ok so going with some urea this week.

Planning on cutting hay of this field, I shut it off today

Land looking for K.

Results say 49 units of N. 3 units of P and 32 units of k. TIA

Here's the result

Very much so - young stock in particular need a nice mixed species ley to minmize this and general scour issues