12 December 2023

Importance of review

Frank Campion of the Animal & Grassland Research and Innovation Centre, Athenry, Co. Galway reports on how it is vital to do a yearly review, even more so in difficult years.

After a comparatively difficult year with wet weather making grazing conditions difficult and impacting flock performance, most farmers will be glad to welcome in 2024. However, it’s important to review the year that’s just gone also to inform decisions for next year.

With this in mind, all of the BETTER sheep farmers are analysing their silage to inform the winter feeding plans, taking soil samples where needed, and finally, they will be completing a profit monitor to review expenditure over the past 12 months. While often not the most exciting jobs, they have the potential to have the biggest impact on the farm in 2024.

On the lowland flocks, rams have been removed, with the flocks targeting ram removal at five to six weeks after introduction. As mentioned, the comparatively wet weather this autumn has made grazing difficult and meant that grass supplies have depleted quicker than planned.

As a result, some of the flocks are housing ewes earlier than normal, as they are not going to re-graze closed paddocks, as this grass will be more valuable next spring.

In addition, for some of the flocks, ewe body condition score (BCS) was behind target and housing early will allow some preferential treatment to be given to thin ewes. Rams are still out on the hill flocks and the initial analysis of the BCS of ewes going to the ram on these flocks was overall good this year, despite some expected variation. Where possible, ewes that were deemed too thin (BCS <2.5) were held back from the ram and will be culled in due course.

For the flocks that are cross breeding this year, they are joining the poorer-performing ewes with the terminal rams. Care is being taken to ensure enough ewes go to the hill rams to produce sufficient replacement ewe lambs for next year.

This article first appeared in the Teagasc Sheep Advisory Newsletter for December. Access the entire publication here.