Signpost: Starting to think about closing up grass for the spring

Des Powell: "I will have 20% of the farm closed by the end of October." Picture: Dan Linehan

As I said in the last article we have been working on building body condition in the ewes over the last while, making sure they were in good condition going into the mating season. 

Rams were joined with the ewes this week and prior to joining the rams I handled all the ewes again, any ewe that has failed to regain body condition is being culled. 

A thin ewe will always cause problems during the year. She will be less healthy, less productive, more likely to need antibiotics, basically problematic. I think I have to be somewhat ruthless with doing this; otherwise, I will be creating extra work for myself in spring.

I have been using raddle on the rams for the past few years and it's working well. I change the colour every week for the first three weeks and after that it will be changed once or twice as needed. The rams will be pulled out after 5-6 weeks. 

In the past, I used to leave them with the ewes for 7-8 weeks which meant I had a long dragged-out lambing period in spring with a lot of extra work involved. Now by pulling the rams after 5-6 weeks, I have a more compact lambing, freeing up my time and better efficiency. My ratio of rams to ewes is 1:35-40 and by focusing on having the ewes in good BCS going to the ram I still have a good pregnancy rate despite the shorter mating period.

We are now at the stage of the year where I am starting to think about closing up grass for the spring. I find that by closing up grass using the autumn rotation planner I have more grass in the spring, meaning I have ewes with lambs at foot grazing in the spring without the need to feed meals. 

I may have to house a little earlier in the winter to achieve this but it is a lot easier to do that with dry ewes than it is to be feeding ewes and lambs meals in the spring. 

I will have 20% of the farm closed by the end of October. I will close the fields closest to the house first so that I have access to these fields at lambing time. I will continue to close fields over the next seven weeks to have everything closed by mid to late December.

The remaining lambs are divided into three groups presently with the ewe lambs I am keeping as replacements grazing separately and the finishing lambs (heavier lambs) in another group being supplemented at grass. 

I have just started to introduce meals to the remaining lambs as I want to get them trained to eat meals and a lot of them are nearly heavy enough for the finishing group anyway. I am doing another faecal egg count this week as with the relatively mild conditions in recent weeks I need to check to see if the lambs need another worm dose.