Teagasc National Sheep Conference to focus on improving Efficiency
Teagasc is hosting two national lowland sheep conferences in January with a theme of ‘Improving the efficiency of your sheep farming enterprise’. These will be held in the Tullamore Court Hotel, Co. Offaly on Tuesday, 29th January and the Clanree Hotel, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal on Thursday, 31st January, both starting at 6pm.
Teagasc National Sheep Conference to focus on improving Efficiency
Teagasc is hosting two national lowland sheep conferences in January with a theme of ‘Improving the efficiency of your sheep farming enterprise’. These will be held in the Tullamore Court Hotel, Co. Offaly on Tuesday, 29th January and the Clanree Hotel, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal on Thursday, 31st January, both starting at 6pm.
There will be three papers presented, highlighting relevant and topical areas of interest to Irish sheep farmers. The first speaker will be Lesley Stubbings, LSSC Ltd, in the Uk and she will address; ‘Developing key performance indicators – how useful is body condition score?’ Lesley Stubbings, is an independent sheep consultant based in the UK where she works directly with farmers to assist them in improving their on-farm efficiency through targeted nutrition and achieving optimum body condition score (BCS). Lesley Stubbings’ paper will outline strategies for feeding the ewe with a particular focus on the late pregnancy period.
The second presentation at the conference will cover ‘Mineral nutrition of grazing sheep – problems and solutions’ and will be given by Dr. Nigel Kendall, a lecturer in the University of Nottingham, where he specialises in Nutrition and Reproduction. Dr Kendall’s paper at the sheep conference will deal specifically with mineral supplementation in sheep production systems, where he will discuss three main areas: How to determine whether or not animals require mineral supplementation?; How best to supplement animals if it is required? How to assess whether or not mineral supplementation was effective on your farm?
An international sheep research project called SheepNet is looking at relevant and practical lessons from international sheep farming. The SheepNet (Sharing Expertise and Experience towards sheep Productivity through NETworking) project aims to increase sheep productivity throughout the six primary sheep producing countries in the EU including France, Ireland, Italy, Romania, Spain and the UK. Dr. Tim Keady, Teagasc, is the primary Irish researcher leading SheepNet. In his paper to the sheep conference, Dr. Keady will outline the three primary areas of the project; reproduction, gestation and reducing lamb mortality while also giving us an overview of the practical knowledge and advice that has been gathered from each of the participating countries.
Declan McEvoy, from IFAC will present a paper on ‘Planning your future and protecting the family farm! Have you considered the opportunities and implications of passing on the farm to the next generation?’
Speaking in advance of the sheep conferences, Ciaran Lynch, Teagasc sheep specialist said: “The Teagasc 2017 National Farm Survey results show an average gross margin of €713 per hectare for lowland mid-season lambing flocks. However, the top one third of flocks generated a gross margin of €1,195/ha compared to €284 for the bottom one third of flocks. Gross margin per hectare is more than five times higher on the Top farms compared to the Bottom. This indicates that there is significant scope to increase income by improving technical efficiency on many farms. At the conference there will be a number of important take home messages from each of the papers. Farmers should focus on implementing a number of these messages and/or technologies on their farms.”
The Teagasc lowland sheep conferences are both Department of Agriculture KT approved events.
The Teagasc hill sheep conference will take place on Tuesday, 19th February in the Glendalough Hotel, Co. Wicklow.