There was a flock of 22 triplet-rearing ewes and 66 lambs; many of these ewes were part of the above experiment.

Finally, there were the ‘remaining’ ewes: mature ewes not in the above two groups, a small number of ewe lambs and the repeat lambing ewes, excluding a small number of triplets.

Overall, we were happy with how the lambs performed from lambing to weaning.

For the triplet ewes, each ewe weaned on average 99kg of lamb. This is equivalent to 1.32 kg lamb liveweight weaned per kg of ewe liveweight mated.

The management of the triplet ewes starts on the day of scanning in late December.

Once a ewe is identified as carrying triplets, she is preferentially treated, grazing reseeded grass swards, prior to moving to Redstart on February 1.

Concentrate feeding began on Redstart at a rate of 0.5kg per day (with suitable build-up), increasing to 1kg at housing around three weeks before lambing.

After lambing, ewes remained indoors for seven days and were offered ad lib grass silage plus 1.5kg of concentrates per day.

Ewes and lambs were then turned out to grass where ewes received 1kg of concentrate per day for a further three weeks, followed by 0.75kg per day for two weeks with one week of receiving 0.5kg of concentrates per day, prior to concentrates being removed at seven weeks post-lambing.

Lambs had access to creep feed from two weeks until 10 weeks, when creep was removed due to pilfering by crows. This did not appear to affect performance, given the weaning weights achieved.

From now until slaughter the lambs will graze Redstart; in the past, this has supported lamb growth rates of 210g per day from weaning to slaughter for our triplet lambs.

The experimental ewes, which form part of Jonathan Higgins’s PhD studies, were fed either perennial ryegrass or a multi-species sward.

Lambs weaned on the multi-species sward were 4kg heavier at weaning than their perennial ryegrass counterparts, while the ewes on the multi-species sward were 6kg heavier at weaning.

This confirms previous findings with these swards.

The remaining cohort of lambs were weaned at 36kg live weight, well ahead of our target of 33kg for this flock.

This reflects a growing season where the swards remained in the ‘Goldilocks zone’ of being just right all along, but never very comfortable in terms of supply of grass or rainfall.

The next month will focus on maintaining quality swards in front of the lambs, selecting lambs as they become fit for slaughter, identification of ewes for culling, and planning for sourcing replacement stock.

 

Prof Tommy Boland is a lecturer in sheep production at Lyons Farm, UCD; @Pallastb; tommy.boland@ucd.ie