On Tuesday, the yearling hogget ewes with lambs at foot were taken in from the field to weigh the lambs to get an idea of how well the group is performing. This batch consists of a mixture of Texel and Suffolk/Mule homebred hoggets and purebred Easycare hoggets bought in last August.

Texel and Suffolk hoggets where joined with a Charolais sire, while Easycare hoggets where bred pure. There were a total of 59 lambs in the group, made up of 26 ram lambs and 33 ewe lambs.

These lambs ranged in age from 77 to 44 days old. There is also a small number of ‘problem’ ewes running with this bunch, these are mature ewes that had issues at lambing or where lambs or ewes where sick in early spring.

The 59 lambs ranged in weight from 13kg to 40kg and averaged out at a respectable 23.44kg. A lambs had an average daily gain of 0.28kg per day. Farm manager Shaun Diver is happy with this performance from these younger lambs that have not received any concentrates as of yet.

Creep feed will be introduced to this bunch of lambs over the weekend to reduce pressure on Yearling hoggets and any ewes with issues who are being ran in this bunch.

The heaviest lamb in the bunch is a 72-day old single ram lamb that weighed in at 40kg. This strong lamb was out of a Texel cross Mule ewe and a Charollais ram. He weighed in at 5.5kg at birth and he has been gaining 0.479kg per day since birth, this is the highest daily gain of the batch of lambs.

On the other end of the scale the lightest lamb in the batch was an Easycare ram lamb that weighed 13kg. He is 67 days old twin and he weighed 3.2kg at birth and he has been gaining just 0.146 per day since then. This lamb has been on the poorer end of thrive since birth having contracted joint ill not long after turnout.

See below a chart of lamb weights:

Please note that the unknown column consists of both Charollais and Easycare lambs as rams were grouped together at the end of breeding and sires were then unknown. Also, the lambs in this group are mostly the younger lambs that were born towards the end of lambing.

Also, in the sheep flock this week there has been two cases of mastitis reported in mature ewes. Both of the affected ewes have been treated with antibiotics and are responding well.

Cows, calves and heifers

In the cattle herd this week breeding has been very quiet with little repeat action. All of the mature cows have now been served and they continue to be monitored and any repeats AI’d.

Farm manager Shaun Diver plans to finish up breeding in the heifer group at the end of next week.

When one of the groups of claves where in the yard this week the opportunity was taken to worm the claves with a pink wormer as coughing had been observed in the group and this is an indication of lungworm being present within the calves. They also received a clostridial vaccine.

Crops

The crop of spring barley is looking well at the minute despite contracting a small bit of virus. This has been reported as very common in spring crops this year, the crop has been sprayed accordingly but Shaun plans to keep a tight eye on the crop to help catch anything that might affect the crop early before it takes hold.

Grass

Grass growth remains ahead of demand despite dwindling quality in the sward. No heavier covers have been taken out as surplus due to showery weather but have instead been grazed and topped afterwards. Topping paddocks post grazing may be associated with poor grass management, however the farm suffered greatly from a moisture deficit during the period of dry weather in early May, rain returned and the stressed swards went to seed quite quickly, topping these paddocks will remove stem or woody material from the sward but will bolster quality in the next round. The farm has received enough moisture at this stage with 12mm falling on Thursday, this brings the total rainfall in the past week to 55mm or just over 2 inches of rain. Soil temperatures sit nicely at 16.5 degrees, this added with moisture and an increase in air temperatures forecast for next week should see growth kick off again. Some heavy paddocks may be skipped in the coming days with the view to perhaps removing these as surplus when settled weather returns. There are currently 20ha closed up for second cut silage and are growing well.