General sheep thread

Anyone on here know what's involved in learning to scan sheep and where would one learn?

Had a visit from Mink a few days ago.One has recovered the other drinking but not standing. Last time we had a problem was 20 years ago. Put pipes in ground with fish. No result from this.Would a light shining on field be any help?

Absolute hate seeing that, high probability alot of sheep up the chute after her has contracted it too

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

Has anyone ever scratched the lambs ear with Scabivax instead of the inside of the leg? Any issues?

Directly with the lab

What lab would you recommend?

No meal

Seem to have some great thrive off lambs this last few weeks here and hopefully the humid weather will push grass on.

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.

My average was around the 15th March, and done them all with worm drench & minerals last Thursday when the sheep came in for shearing, Most lambs looked clean but there was some starting to scour, drench has dried them up big time. Id be of the opinion if there are some scouring then do them all, no since waiting till they all have it.

Does anyone know what wool is going for this year?

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