Sheep farmers ought to prioritise diet forward of lambing to extend productiveness and cut back lamb losses.
This was the important thing level arising from SAC Consulting’s latest run of pre-lambing webinars, which featured recommendation and experiences from farmers, specialists, and vets, seeking to maximise the lamb crop from indoor methods, arduous hill environments and upland flocks.
The ‘Lamb Crop 2022’ webinars attracted near 400 viewers throughout the three digital periods, and the core messages which featured all through had been the significance of standard physique situation scoring of ewes to gauge diet ranges, and analysing forage to grasp what supplementary feeding is required to fulfill power shortfalls.
SAC Consulting’s sheep and grassland specialist Poppy Frater emphasised that diet could make the best contribution to lambing success: “The fats reserves on the ewe are indicative of her well being and have been proven to affect rearing success.
“We encourage all sheep farmers to evaluate situation of their flock extra steadily to construct confidence in a scale from 1 to five that fits their flock. At lambing, the goal situation rating for lowland is 3, upland flocks is 2.5 and hill flocks is 2.
“Ewes under a situation rating of two at weaning do are inclined to have decrease scanning percentages, so be sure you get them as much as goal of three as rapidly as attainable,” suggested Ms Frater.
Farmers lambing outside had been inspired to wean earlier, to make sure ewes can get to a greater situation rating earlier than the winter.
Ms Frater speculated that basing diet extra round grass may very well be the place the long run lies in sheep farming, with a nod to rising fertiliser and feed prices, and emphasised the significance of resting grass by way of the winter to make sure spring grass yield.
Farmers had been inspired to contemplate a number of totally different methods, from resting lambing paddocks by utilizing rotational grazing, feeding silage or hay, and grazing on forage crops. However, she identified that with forage crops, farmers ought to think about what they’re shedding in space, when the crop is rising, and to keep in mind that ewes want time to adapt to totally different forages and ought to be allowed a transition interval over every week.
“Energy buckets and licks are actually helpful within the hill scenario,” Ms Frater continued, “however they’re designed to enrich grass, not change it. Often power buckets will solely present 1 to 2 megajoules of power and a 60kg ewe would require 16 megajoules of power pre lambing. They complement grass and act as a little bit of insurance coverage, however are an costly and difficult strategy to meet the vast majority of power necessities.”
During late being pregnant, Ms Frater famous that farmers have a tendency to usher in different dietary supplements to enrich forage. “It is necessary to grasp the standard of your silage as this can affect how a lot power you get from silage, and you may be extra strategic in understanding what focus is required to fulfill that power shortfall.
Read extra: Ensuring a successful lambing begins with colostrum
“How you feed supplementary concentrates will assist mitigate any unfavourable impression on rumen pH. Introduce slowly, begin on not more than 0.25kg and improve by 50g to 100g per day. If you could feed greater than 0.45kg per ewe, per day, break up this into two feeds. When feeding straights, issues like barley fed complete, keep away from extreme processing, and supply satisfactory feed area.”
She warned that grasping ewes can usually eat the feed allotted to the shy feeders and be inclined to twin lamb illness consequently.
“Space necessities are additionally necessary to minimise stress within the ewe which then has an impression on how simply she lambs and the lamb vigour,” Ms Frater continued, including that the identical logic ought to be utilized to ring feeders and recommending that 24 ewes ought to be allotted per feeder.
Issuing a phrase of warning to sheep farmers wanting to save cash on supplementary feeding, she suggested them towards false economies.
“Cheaper concentrates could also be poorer high quality and due to this fact will want extra kilos to offer satisfactory power, which isn’t rumen pleasant,” she defined. “In addition to the protein content material (goal 18% crude protein) ask for the metabolisable power content material when evaluating feeds and watch for prime inclusion of poor-quality substances resembling oatfeed, palm kernel and rapeseed meal.”
https://www.thescottishfarmer.co.uk/news/19983583.lambing-success-starts-nutrition/
