07 March 2023

Options for rearing surplus lambs

Year in, year out sheep farmers are posed with the challenge of managing surplus or ‘pet’ lambs. These lambs occur due to numerous reasons, including: multiple births (2 lambs); mismothering by the ewe; a lack of milk at lambing time; or the orphaning of lambs at birth, to name just a few.

Michael Gottstein, Head of Sheep Knowledge Transfer, joined Ciarán Lynch, Teagasc Sheep Specialist, on a recent Let’s Talk Sheep Webinar, where they discussed ‘practical tips to make lambing easier’. Part of the discussion detailed the options available to farmers with surplus lambs, with the first port of call being fostering.

“No matter what litter size you have in your flock, you will always have some need for fostering,” Michael said, with “wet fostering being the best option”.

Wet fostering involves being present when the single ewe you intend fostering the lamb onto is lambing. During the lambing, the aim is to catch as much of the birthing fluid as possible to then immerse a washed ‘foster’ lamb in before attempting to complete a successful cross foster.

Points to note with fostering:

• Catch as much lambing fluids as possible;
• Have foster lamb washed and immobilised;
• Immerse foster lamb in fluids and stimulate ewe for a pseudo lambing;
• Sprinkle salt on foster lamb to encourage licking;
• Remove own lamb for 20 minutes;
• Observe mothering, both initially and in the days after fostering.

Using a ‘pet pen

Some farms have great success with fostering each year, but there are nearly always a number of lambs that fail to be fostered onto suitable ewes. These lambs then become dependent on the shepherd to provide their nutritional needs during the milk feeding stage.

“An awful lot of people will do that with bottles,” Michael said, “and you can spend an awful lot of time every day feeding lots of lambs with bottles and it is very time consuming. I would very strongly advocate that we set up a pet lamb pen with an automatic feeder before lambing even starts.”

When an automatic feeder is the selected option to rear these surplus lambs, Michael noted the importance of removing these lambs – in the case of triplets – at 24-36 hours of age.

“The idea of leaving a ewe with three lambs in an individual pen for two or three days – waiting for a single ewe to lamb – to be able to foster the lamb onto, that’s fine if it works. But if it doesn’t work and we then subsequently have to make a pet lamb out of that surplus lamb, it is very hard to get that lamb onto artificial milk once it over 36 hours of age.”

By moving lambs over to the ‘pet’ pen in this timeframe, new entrants tend to learn from its existing inhabitants of how to feed from the feeder with very little intervention. However, Michael noted that markings should be applied to the lambs to identify which lambs need supervision in the days after movement. Another option available to farmers is marking the lambs with the date on which they were moved across using a spray marker to monitor their time in the ‘pet’ pen and their duration on the milk feeder.

Feeding milk replacer

With various automatic feeders available on the market, with the capacity to feed 20 lambs or more, at a cost in the region of €300-400/unit, Michael provided a number of tips to farmers setting up a feeder this year.

For the first 10 days, the feeder should be set to heat the milk to 25-27 degrees, which will encourage milk intakes of approximately 1-1.5L/day. From 10 days on, the temperate can be reduced to the minimum temperature (usually around 18-20 degrees) to provide the lambs with lukewarm milk. During this period, the lamb’s milk intake will be approximately 2.5L/day.

At three weeks of age, he said, the lambs would be moved onto cold milk, as it limits their intake, stops them from gorging and prevents bloat. This system of feeding would continue until approximately 35 days of age, when weaning takes place.

Commenting on the volume required, Michael said: “Milk replacer has gone up quite significantly in price, like all the other input costs. Generally what we’d say is we should be targeting around 13kg of milk replacer per lamb, that’s to rear the lamb to 35 days. Depending on which milk replacer is used, it can cost €45-60/lamb for the milk alone to rear a lamb through to weaning.”

With this high cost in 2023, Michael noted that some farmers may consider selling their pet lambs rather than rearing them. However, this will depend on the market conditions for these lambs this year and he also advised farmers to be aware of how much milk replacer lambs have consumed if selling is the preferred management option.

“If you are selling surplus lambs as pets, you need to be very conscious of how much milk you have put into them because if you are selling a lamb that’s 2-3 weeks of age, it could have €20-30 of milk replacer consumed already, so that needs to be reflected in the price,” he said.

Systems

Michael also outlined three systems available to farmers planning on rearing surplus lambs this year. The first involves rearing the lambs on ad-lib milk and lamb creep, weaning at 35 days of age, and then turning lambs out to grass at 8-10 weeks, with lambs finished outdoors.

“This is a system we have been advocating for a while. It is rearing surplus lambs on ad-lib milk replacer until five weeks of age. That’s 13kg of milk replacer, plus lamb creep and then turnout to grass at 8-10 weeks of age and run them on grass with the rest of the lambs.

“At current costs, taking milk replacer at €3.60/kg and concentrates at €500/t, that lamb is costing about €80 to rear there between the cost of milk replacer, meal, miscellaneous costs and grass.”

System 1: Rear surplus lambs on ad-lib milk replacer and lamb creep, turn out to grass at 8-10 weeks of age and finish at grass

System 2

The second system he detailed involved managing the lambs in the exact same manner up until weaning at 35 days of age. But instead of being turned out to grass, lambs are finished indoors on an intensive, concentrate-based diet.

“That’s a high performance system. We see very good performance on that. They don’t get the setback when they go out to grass and lambs finish very quickly,” Michael said.

The costs of this system are significantly higher, Michael outlined, as more meal is used, with an approximate meal input of 121kg/lamb. When an assumed price of €500/t is used, this comes to €60.50/lamb on meal alone.

With total costs coming to €111.30/lamb, Michael said: “At current lamb prices, you would want to be optimistic if you were venturing down that particular route this particular year.”

System 2: Rear surplus lambs on ad-lib milk replacer and finish intensively indoors

With total costs coming to €111.30/lamb, Michael said: “At current lamb prices, you would want to be optimistic if you were venturing down that particular route this particular year.”

System 3

The third system Michael discussed was rearing three lambs on triplet-bearing ewes, studies on which have been completed in Athenry over many years.

Farmers operating this system often run this group with lambed hoggets. This means that the ewe rearing triplet lambs can be supplemented with 0.5kg/head/day of concentrates for the first five weeks post turnout to ensure sufficient milk yield.

For this system to be a success, Michael added: “We need three evenly sized lambs. We need a ewe – a very milky ewe – that is capable of rearing those lambs. And there is the risk with this particular system, that if it goes wrong and one of the lambs starts fading, they can be hard enough to get back onto an artificial feeder.”

System 3: Cost of rearing triplets on ewe

Under this system the cost of rearing the third or surplus lamb is €45.58. In cost terms, he said: “By a long shot, it is the one that makes more sense. But it is not a simple system and you need to pick your ewes and not every ewe is going to be suitable and not every farmer will have a system where they can manage these ewes as a separate crop, which you would need to have in that situation.”

The full recording of the Let’s Talk Sheep Webinar is available below.