Performance Recording at Lambing time

In the current climate, with inputs such as feed and fertilizer cost constantly increasing, now is the time for sheep farmers to start performance recording and collecting data. This will help their flock’s performance to improve and thus leave more profit for the farmer.

What are the benefits of performance recording?

Lambing time is the most time-consuming period on any sheep farm however, collecting records at lambing time that will help make culling and breeding decisions later in the year that will lead to less issues the following spring is hugely important. Issues like ewes that are hard to lamb, or poor mothers should be identified and culled as they take up most time which could be used doing something else. Having information at one's fingertips for making breeding decisions is a huge benefit of recording data at lambing time.

What does performance recording at lambing time entail?

Tagging lambs within 24 hours of birth is the key element of performance recording as it allows you to correctly link all the data being collected to the right animals. Some farmers have reservations about tagging lambs, however if the tag is correctly placed and high levels of hygiene are maintained there will be no issue. The main things a sheep farmer needs to record at lambing time to begin performance recording their flock are as follows:

• Date of Birth – Allows for accurate average daily gains (ADG’s) to be generated for the lamb so you know they are thriving as expected and can see which ones are performing better than others.
• Birth Weight – Again, this is important so we can tell if lambs are thriving as expected. This is also a predictor for lamb survival and lambing difficulty.
• Parentage – Link each lamb to its mother at the least, and where Single Sire Mating has taken place, link the lamb to its sire also.
• Lambing Difficulty – By recording this, we can identify the ewes and rams that are potentially difficult to lamb and remove them from the flock before the next season.
• Mortality -Again similar to lambing difficulty, by recording the ewes and rams that have had a dead lamb(s), over a period of time, a picture will be built of bloodlines that perform poorly in this regard and decisions can be made to remove them from the flock.

All this data can be captured and recorded using Sheep Ireland LambPlus App, which is free to use for members of the LambPlus performance recording program.

Summary

Performance recording is about identifying the sheep that are the poorest performing in the flock and removing them, which ensures the flocks performance is constantly improving. Performance recording is quite a simple operation to carry out. It can be a bit time consuming for beginners, but you reap what you sow. The more effort one puts into the data they collect and record, the more they will see the benefits as the years go by. If you are interested in performance recording your flock, contact Sheep Ireland by emailing query@sheep.ie, or call 023 882 0451.  Watch the video below to find out more about how to use the Sheep Ireland App

 With thanks to Sean Godfrey, Sheep Ireland.