Farming
By Neale McQuistin
Sheep farmers are being urged to prioritise nutrition ahead of lambing, to increase flock productivity and reduce lamb losses.
SAC Consulting held three webinars in the run-up to the lambing season, featuring advice and experiences from farmers, specialists, and vets on maximising lamb crop in indoor systems, hard hill environments and upland systems.
The “Lamb Crop 2022” webinars attracted close to 400 viewers across the three virtual sessions and two of the core messages which featured throughout were the importance of regular body condition scoring of ewes to gauge nutrition levels and analysing forage to understand what supplementary feeding is needed to meet energy shortfalls.
SAC Consulting’s sheep and grassland specialist, Poppy Frater, emphasised to farmers that nutrition can make the greatest contribution to lambing success.
“The fat reserves on the ewe are indicative of her health and have been shown to influence rearing success,” she said. “We encourage all sheep farmers to assess condition of their flock more frequently to build confidence in a scale from one to five that suits their flock. At lambing, the target condition score for lowland is three, upland flocks is 2.5 and hill flocks is two.”
During late pregnancy, Ms Frater pointed out that farmers tend to bring in other supplements to complement forage.
“It is important to understand the quality of your silage as this will influence how much energy you get from silage, and you can be more strategic in understanding what concentrate is required to meet that energy shortfall.
Market round-up
Messrs Craig Wilson Ltd sold 1,291 prime and cast sheep at Newton Stewart yesterday.
Quality export hoggets were scarce and very easily sold. The sale was topped at 298p/kg for a Beltex with many other pens selling for over 260p.
However, heavy and lean sheep continue to be hard to sell. Top per head was £127 for a Beltex and also for a Charolais. The overall average was 239p (-3p).
Cast sheep peaked at £152 for a Suffolk tup with ewes to £126 for Zwartbles. Mules sold to £115, while Blackfaces made up to £100.
C&D Auction Marts sold 60 cattle at their sale of primestock in Dumfries yesterday when prime cattle sold to 240p/kg and £1,737.
OTMs continued to improve in value.
Dairy types sold to £1,566 and 190p/kg to average 147p, while beef types peaked at £1,666 and 217p/kg to average 168p.
It was an Irish-bred Limousin cross cow that sold 217p/kg to set a new centre record.
There were also 685 prime hoggets which were sold on a steady trade with best types scarce and selling for 260p to 280p.
Cast sheep peaked at £215 for a Texel tup and at £176 for a Texel ewe.
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