Paul Boyle Teagasc BETTER Farm Sheep Programme Participant

The lowland flock on Paul Boyle’s farm, comprising of 65 crossbred ewes this year, are now in the latter stages of the mating season. They are carried on just over 8ha of medium quality land close to the village of Dunkineely.

Paul runs his hill flock of  Scottish blackface ewes on a separate land block some 25km away. The hill flock is grazed on a combination of privately owned and commonage hill grazing as well as an adjoining area of improved grassland.

Body condition score (BCS) at mating

As with all participants in the Teagasc Sheep BETTER farm programme all lowland and hill ewes are weighed and body condition scored prior to ram turnout. The lowland ewes were joined with Suffolk and Belclare rams on 22^nd October with a plan to retain female progeny of the Belclare sire as prolific replacements. This lambing date is being pushed back with a view to better matching the start of grass growth on the Dunkineely farm. As shown in Table 1, there has been a notable improvement in body condition score of the lowland flock over the last two years due mainly to better management of thinner ewes for at least 10 weeks pre-mating. The average body condition score increased from an average of 3.0 in 2020 to 3.4 in 2022. The percentage of lowland ewes coming in under body condition score of 3.0 has also dramatically reduced. This is a useful figure to focus on as averages can be deceptive with Paul aiming to further reduce this to below 10%.

Table 1: Comparison of last three years body condition score (BCS) on lowland flock

Flock management during and post mating

Mating is closely monitored with raddle being used and colour changed weekly for the first three weeks. All ewes would appear to have been served in the first 17 days and the number of repeats seem to be low in the early days of the second cycle. A red raddle colour will be used on rams from three weeks up to removal of rams after 35 days of mating. The other important task taking place through the mating period is closing up paddocks starting with paddocks that will be grazed first in spring. Temporary electric fencing is used to good effect to get smaller blocks grazed out quickly to 3.5 to 4.0cm thus not forcing ewes to graze low covers for a prolonged period. Ewe body condition will be examined post mating with any thin ewes being housed immediately and put on good quality silage to avoid any further loss in body condition. Once the last paddock is grazed, probably in early to mid-December, the remainder of the ewes will be winter housed.

Update on hill flock

The hill ewes were in very good condition going to the ram last year with an average body condition score of 3.0 and no ewes scoring under 2.5. At the time of writing, weighing and condition scoring of the hill ewes had not yet been completed but will be done before planned ram turnout date on 19^th November. Paul’s feeling is that the hill ewes may be slightly behind on body condition of last year pointing to the extremely wet weather in October into November. The ewes have been down from the hill in recent weeks on the low ground in an effort to build body condition before mating. The hill ewes will be joined with Scottish Blackface rams for the first cycle with Suffolk rams being joined subsequently to cover the repeats. Hill ewe numbers have increased by a combination of keeping homebred replacements as well as a small number purchased from a known source. The aim is to produce a good selection of suitable female replacements to further build hill flock numbers. Eventually when flock numbers stabilise there will be more options to breed crossbred replacements for the lowland flock.

Acres plan

Paul is currently getting a farm plan prepared to join acres. The focus will be mainly on the hill farm which contains large areas of commonage and natura land. It is seen by Paul as a very important scheme not just from an environmental viewpoint but also for the economic sustainability of his family farm.