Autumn preparations begin for 200 ewes and hoggets
Farmer Michael Forde putting some of the sheep through his purpose-built footbath. Photo: Ray Ryan
We have had significant rainfall in the last few weeks in the Galway area. Farming in Corrandulla, 12 kilometres north of Galway City, we are well used to dealing with large volumes of rain.
We are farming lands in four different blocks, which would be typical of the area as land fragmentation is an issue many Galway farmers have to deal with.
We try and maximise each block to its potential whilst trying to minimise the amount of stock movements, as this takes time, effort and diesel.
We have the cattle housed currently and they will be introduced to concentrates soon to finish them. The cattle are in good order and did a good thrive throughout the summer.
The last of the store lambs are on 500g of meal per head per day and they will be drafted over the next couple of months.
The rams were let out on October 2. We expect lambing to commence at the end of February/start of March.
We let out Texel rams to the mature ewes and we decided to let Charolais rams to the hoggets and our own replacement hoggets.
The ram effect was used to try and bring these ewes into heat, so hopefully this is working and it should tighten and compact the lambing duration.
We have increased the number of ewes and hoggets to lamb this coming spring. We have approximately 150 mature ewes to the rams at present, along with 60 hoggets. Aiming for around 200 ewes and hoggets to lamb down.
I usually take a few weeks off work to lamb the ewes as it’s a very busy few weeks on the farm. My father Bernie is a big help on the farm.
We have good covers of grass in front of ewes at present. But we are also thinking of springtime as we need to ensure that we will have good paddocks for the ewes and lambs, as this won’t be long coming around.
We keep a close eye on body condition score all year round. When lambs are weaned, we usually group ewes according to body condition so that we can prioritise the best grass for the lambs and then the thinner ewes.
Being part of the Teagasc Better Sheep Programme, we record a significant amount of data and body condition scoring is one of the most important aspects of sheep farming.
Being part of this programme and having a focus on body condition has improved our ewe condition and lambing rates.
When the mature ewes were checked before joining the ram this year, the average score was 3.4 for the ewes and 3.2 for the hoggets.
We also plan to sample the silage in the next week or two.
We always number each field and this helps when sampling the silage as we can trace the silage back to each field.
We should have good-quality silage again this year as it was grazed prior to fertilising, received sufficient fertiliser and it was cut in good conditions.
But all will be revealed when the analysis comes back.
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