3 cost effective solutions for recording data at lambing time
Lambing time can be one of the most labour intensive times on sheep farms but it can also be a great opportunity to learn more about our flocks to try and improve them for the future.
Teagasc Research Officer, Dr. Frank Campion details the benefits and outlines three cost effective solutions that every flock can implement.
Recording data at lambing time is an additional task but there are ways of doing it efficiently and easily so that when making decisions, such as selecting replacement ewe lambs, what ewes are going to the ram or what ewes need to be culled before mating the following year, we have some data to make those decisions with.
Advantages
The biggest advantage of this is not only the incremental improvements in flock performance we can make over time, such as improved lamb growth rates and higher weaning rates, but also by reducing labour.
The majority of labour at lambing time is often aimed at the small proportion of problem ewes and lambs, such as ewes with poor milk yield, lambs that are slow to stand and suckle etc. It is important that these and their progeny are identified as they are more likely to have these issues in the future.
Equally, ewes that may have had a prolapse or not reared lambs after lambing can disappear into the rest of the flock. By the time the following mating season comes around, they often look fit for breeding and the memory of the issues at lambing are forgotten.
What can we record at lambing time and how should we do it?
While most people will immediately think of the EID electronic data recording equipment, these don’t suit every flock. For some flocks, this level of expenditure will be unsuitable and unnecessary relative to the size of the flock and for others they may want to start more basic and work up to this level of data recording.
Three cost effective ways of recoding additional data at lambing to use in our decisions later in the year are:
1). Put a diary in the shed
Writing even simple notes of tag numbers or other issues that occurred at lambing can allow you to review this then later in the year and make decisions to improve the system. It allows for any additional interventions to be easily recorded such as veterinary treatments.
2). Use ‘cull’ tags
Use ‘cull’ tags to identify ewes that have had issues that would make them unsuitable or undesirable for breeding the following year. These management tags can be purchased from most tag suppliers, are very cost effective (~0.30-40c per tag) and they do not have individual IDs on them, so they can be used on any ewe in the flock.
Equally management tags with other colours or writing on them can be purchased if you want to identify very high performing ewes to ensure they are bred to rams for breeding replacements the following year.
3). Tagging ewe lambs potentially suitable for keeping as replacement ewes
Ewe lambs born to ewes that have good mothering ability, good milk yield and lamb easily are more likely to be good mothers themselves compared to lambs born to ewes who do not perform as well at lambing time. For flocks where they are tagging all lambs prior to turnout then the EID recording option is obviously the gold standard. However, something as simple as purchasing coloured management discs can be very effective. These discs can then be added when tagging to identify ewe lambs from the best performing ewes or ewe lambs from particular rams etc. that we want to keep in the flock. For those not tagging all lambs, it is worthwhile having some tags at lambing time and simply tagging the ewe lambs that would make suitable replacements.
As with any data recording, it’s no good unless it is then used later in the year to make management decisions. Recording simple data such as this will lead to improvements in flock performance over time.