Lambing | Bearwood Lleyn Sheep

Lambing 2018 About To Finish

Lambing is about over at Bearwood for another year. This year has been challenging to say the least; 6 inches of snow and temperatures down to -13 degrees!

Even with these cold temperatures, ewes lambed with no problems and lambs were “licked off” and up and sucking quickly, testament to the easy lambing and good maternal instincts of the Lleyn and Blue Texel breed.

I lamb the flock on my own, with the help from my neighbour for a couple of hours on my busiest days. 200 (out of 220) ewes lambed in 16 days which allowed me to adopt all triplet lambs onto singles, thereby having no orphan lambs to feed. The use of teasers (vasectomised) rams in the autumn really “tightens up” the lambing period.

I have been using a block feeding system for the past couple of years and do not feed concentrates. 8 weeks prior to lambing I introduce Rumenco Super Energy plus Fish Oil blocks to the ewes and then change to Lifeline Lamb and Ewe blocks from 4 weeks. Once the ewe and lambs are turned out they are fed Rumenco Graze DUP blocks.

I find block feeding suits my system here at Bearwood for a number of reasons:

Ease of management.
Eliminates pushing and shunting that occurs when feeding concentrates prior to lambing which can lead to ewes loosing lambs early and proplapses.
Eliminates over supply of milk at lambing due to over feeding. Lambs cannot “latch” on to large teats which can lead to lamb death and mastitis. I find that ewes milk to lambs demand on blocks.
Eliminates young lambs loosing their mothers that can occur in the “cavalry charge” when you arrive at the field when concentrate feeding. With blocks, ewes and lambs are relaxed and it is easy to identify lambs that are not with their mothers and react accordingly.
Concentrate feeding in the field is done once, possibly twice a day. With blocks ewes are able to obtain energy 24 hours a day and whenever they require it. This has been noticeable this year when we have had snow on the ground and very cold temperatures. Lambs have always had full bellies even when the weather has been dismal and I noticed that block consumption increased dramatically when snow was on the ground and ewes were unable to get to the grass.
Lambs get the benefits of the blocks as they get older. I do not creep feed so when ewes milk supply starts to decrease and lambs begin to eat grass they get the benefit of the blocks also.

We now need some warm weather to make the grass grow and sunshine for the ewes and lambs.

Article on the simplified feeding system here at Bearwood published in March 2018 by Rumenco

New Feeding Regime Pre Lambing

As most sheep farmers will know, the one part of your body that starts to give you problems as you get older is your back and I am no exception.

In the past I have spent hours every winter filling bags with feed both morning and evening and forking out silage twice a day but I have been told by the experts that I need to find a way of easing the workload on my back if I want to be mobile in 15- 20 years time.

This autumn I am feeding Rumevite blocks to the ewes with only the triplets getting a small amount of concentrate 2 weeks before lambing. I have used the Super Energy + Fish Oil to date and will change to Lifeline Ewe and Lamb 4-6 weeks before lambing and then use Graze UDP for ewes and lambs when they are turned out after lambing. For the blocks to be a success the ewes must have access to good quality forage and for the past number of years I have really concentrated on making good quality round bale silage in the summer.

Housed In Lamb Ewes With Ad Lib Sialge and Lifeline Blocks

This is by no means cheaper than using only concentrate but the costs will hopefully be somewhere near especially in what I save in the usual osteopathic treatment costs post normal lambing!! Time will tell.

Bedding costs have been saved this year as it has been so dry. I normally house ewes just before Christmas (10 weeks pre lambing) but this year they will be housed 5-6 weeks before.

Due to not having a large number of ewes, bedding down and feeding silage to housed ewes is manual rather than mechanical so the reduced time the sheep are in the sheds is good news for my back! This year when the ewes are housed I will be feeding them whole bale silage in cradle feeders which they can eat ad-lib and it also saves me forking out silage twice a day; I’ll let the tractor do the heavy work.

I will be interesting to see how this new feeding regime works.

Lambing 2016

Lambing is coming to an end for another year. I had a lambing assistant from a non farming background helping me this year. It is nice to see a young person passionate about sheep and wanting to forge a career in the industry.

The weather was settled for the majority of March which allowed us to put ewes and lambs straight out to pasture 48hrs after birth. The storms over Easter were not pleasant, winds from the north and east with rain is a “lamb killer” on any lamb that is weak or looses it’s mother during the night. We luckily only lost a couple of lambs with the others looking pretty miserable but as I write this post, the sun is out and all lambs are jumping about.

The Blue Texels lambed well with 75% being ewe lambs, which is just what I wanted. This means I will have between 15 and 20 Blue Texel ewe lambs for sale this year. The Lleyn percentage of ewe to ram lambs is 50%, so there will be up to 200 ewe lambs available. All ewes lambed with little assistance and with plenty of milk and the lambs are doing well.

Lambing About To Start

Lambing starts at the beginning of March with 350 ewes due to lamb in 4 weeks; 50 Lleyn ewe lambs will lamb in the 1st half of April. All ewes are housed and will lamb indoors and then turned out to grass with their lambs soon after they have given birth. The next fortnight is the “quiet before the storm!”

All lambs are weighed at birth and ewes given a score as to whether they were assisted while having their lambs. Over the past 5 years I only have had a difficult lambing in about 1 in every 80 ewes, so the majority give birth on their own. Any ewes that are assisted while having their lambs are identified and culled later in the year. The aim is not to assist ewes while they lamb and only go in as a last resort. By selecting ewes on “ease of lambing”, I have reduced the number of assisted births considerably since I formed the Lleyn flock here 17 years ago.

All lambs will be electronically tagged at birth and their tag number, birth weight and ewes tag number recorded on a handheld computer in the lambing shed. All this information will be downloaded onto my laptop every evening. It is essential that I have accurate breeding records for every animal, for future planning for myself and also customers who are looking for specific bloodlines when purchasing breeding animals.

There is a camera in the sheep shed that I can access on my Iphone, Ipad and laptop. I only have a lambing assistant during the day, so at night I can scan the shed remotely from the house every hour and only go out as necessary. I have been using a camera for over 5 years and find that the ewes are far more settled at night as I am not disturbing them every hour, plus I get more short spells of sleep. The body soon becomes accustomed to power naps of 40 minutes, however, sleep deprivation over a period of time becomes more difficult as you get older!!

Weather is critical for lamb survival rate at lambing time. Good weather means grass growth and ewes producing good milk. This means lambs grow quickly and more importantly, are healthy. Bad weather means that ewes need to be fed more to produce milk and lambs do not do well if they are permanently wet and cold. Lets hope for a good Spring.

Lambing Over

Lambing is almost over with just two ewes left to lamb. We were luckily not affected by the Schmallenberg virus and the weather, although cold was not too severe. We had snow but luckily a couple of inches and not a couple of feet like in some areas.

The ewes and lambs have survived well. I do not creep the lambs but I am still feeding concentrate to the ewes to help them produce milk until the grass grows.

The majority of Lleyns and Blue Texels lambed on their own in the lambing shed and ewes and lambs were put out onto grass within three days of being born. Even in the snow and rain lamb losses were minimal. Both breeds of sheep are excellent mothers and have plenty of milk.

The camera in the sheep shed that sends images to my computer was yet again a great asset. I lambed the ewes on my own and only get help when I transport ewes and lambs from the shed to the field.

The lambs will be drenched shortly with a wormer that covers Nematodirus and a multi vitamin.

We now need sunshine and warm weather to get the grass to grow and to help the lambs get a good start in life.

Lambing Well Under Way

Lambing is well under way and thank goodness all lambs born so far have been fit and healthy with no signs of the Schmallenberg virus being present.

In past years when feeding concentrate to ewes indoors I have used sheep rolls instead of nuts and thrown them onto the straw for the ewes to eat. I find feeding sheep this way prevents pushing and shoving that occurs when trough feeding. The ewes also spend many hours during the day ferreting around in the straw for food, thereby not getting bored. The one problem I found when feeding rolls was that older and younger ewes had problems eating them and many ewes that had recently lambed were not interested in them. I was also hesitant to throw nuts onto the straw as I was worried that due to the size of the nut there would be a lot of wastage and this concerned me with the price of concentrate feed going up year on year. This year I made the decision to use sheep nuts and I have been very impressed with the results. All the feed is eaten up with very little wastage and the ewes are producing lots of milk.

Nearly all the Blue Texels have lambed. The majority have lambed on their own and the lambs have been up on their feet and sucking in no time. The ewes are very good mothers which makes my job much easier. One ewe had to have a caesarian as she had two big lambs inside her with one lamb twisted. There was not enough room to untwist the lamb and deliver it normally so the decision was made to get the lambs out by surgery.

The Lleyns are also lambing and again they lamb on their own and my main job is moving ewes and lambs to individual pens and weighing and tagging lambs for recording purposes. Like past years, I only have to assist roughly 1 in a 100 ewes that lamb.

We have a thriving lamb bar at present. I only put 2 lambs on a ewe so a ewe that has three lambs has one spare. This lamb will be reared artificially using powdered milk.

The camera in the sheep shed has revolutionized lambing for me, especially at nights. I can scan the shed from my computer or smart phone and do not have to continually go out to the shed, thereby disturbing the sheep. As an example, last night my alarm went off at 2am. I scanned the shed and saw that a few ewes had lambed, all the lambs were OK and with their mothers, so I reset the alarm for 5.30am so I could sort everything out before feeding. Now that we have been lambing for a couple of weeks, the lambing pens have thinned out so there is room for a ewe to find a space away from the others to lamb.

I try to turn ewes and lambs out onto grass as soon as possible after birth but I do make sure there is are forecast of 48 hours dry weather after turnout. The grass is not growing yet, however, I luckily have enough hay and silage to see me through.

Now I am waiting for warmer weather. It will not only make the grass grow but do me some good as well!