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Know How / Sheep / Assessing performance

Understanding your flock’s technical and financial performance is essential to make improvements and understand if your system is performing optimally.

We discuss how and why margins and costs should be calculated to analyse your business economically, on a cost of production, per ewe or per hectare basis.

Learn about the range of productivity metrics to for flock benchmarking and improvement, from scanning and rearing percentages to the cost of tups/kg of lamb sold and difficult figures like calculating mortality and maternal ability.

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Case studies

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SHEEP

Flock genetics beat challenges to hit 170% reared budget

Prolific flock genetics and skilful management have overcome setbacks to get a lowland sheep flock hitting budgets, three years after being established. Farm manager Ben Smith says the accounts at…

SHEEP

How a Welsh hill farm is improving lambs' finishing weights

Greater numbers of lambs produced from a Welsh hill flock are hitting finishing weights since performance recording was introduced to improve genetics across the entire flock. The Davies family run…

BREEDING AND FERTILITY

Breeders step up hunt for wool-shedding genetics

A farmer and a vet are embarking on what they claim is the world’s largest progeny testing scheme of wool-shedding sheep in a quest to breed low-input, low-footprint sheep for…

LIVESTOCK

Profitability peaks with 55-65kg lowland ewe, study shows

Commercial lowland sheep are too big, pushing up maintenance costs and hampering profitability. This is according to Tim Byrne of science and technology consulting firm Abacus Bio, which conducted a…

SHEEP

What a Carmarthenshire farm did to lift profits by 52% a ewe

Monitoring ewes and managing their body condition score (BCS) has helped reduce the rate of barren and aborted ewes by 6.4% in a Welsh flock, helping to lift profit margin…

LIVESTOCK MARKETING

How a lamb producer and breeder uses EBVs for marketing rams

David Rossiter is a pioneer of performance recording – he started collecting data in the 1970s when he established the Huish flocks at Burton Farm, in Galmpton, Devon. With his…

Practical advice

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SHEEP

Why and when farmers should weigh sheep

There is a whole heap of reasons to weigh sheep regularly. In fact, the benefits are four-fold: for health, nutrition, management, and genetic purposes, says Peter Stoker, marketing manager from…

SHEEP

3 ways to cut lamb worm risk at weaning

Sheep farmers trying to make the most of grass to counteract sky-high concentrate prices are advised to be vigilant for parasites in lambs post-weaning. Grazing grass can put lambs at…

SHEEP

How to get the most from a Defra sheep health and welfare review

Preparing flock performance figures for the new state-funded vet consultation will help sheep farmers get the most out of their Animal Health and Welfare Pathway visit. Animal health experts say…

GRASSLAND MANAGEMENT

How to budget and allocate rotational grazing for ewes

Preparing a grazing budget and assigning pasture on a rotational basis can significantly boost grass growth and a farm’s overall productivity. When managing a flock of ewes, these tools offer…

YOUNGSTOCK MANAGEMENT

How to troubleshoot poor lamb growth rates

Assessing lamb performance early on is essential to ensure steps can be put in place to maintain growth rates post-weaning. The AHDB Sheep Key Performance Indicators project found light lambs…

ASSESSING PERFORMANCE

Why farmers should assess costs before changing sheep breed

Sheep farms should fully cost their flock profit margins and assess the impact of small gains in technical performance before looking to change breed or system. This was the message…

Insights

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SHEEP

How reducing methane emissions is win-win for flock performance

Results from thousands of methane measurements from sheep flocks across Ireland have confirmed that genetics play a part in enteric fermentation. This means farmers can select for low emitters, reducing…

LIVESTOCK

The benefits of investing in a maternal ram

Advances in sheep production systems including flock identification, record-keeping, ultrasound scanning, handling systems and computing power have transformed our ability to use information to identify and breed from sheep with…

HEALTH AND WELFARE

Why health gains cut ruminant methane emissions by 10%

Three classic livestock benchmarking targets can help sheep and cattle farms raise technical performance and meet obligatory methane goals to battle climate change. Livestock policy leaders are urging farmers to…

SHEEP

Does the UK have too many sheep breeds?

Over the centuries a spectrum of breeds has evolved in Britain, from fast-growing, prolific lowland types to hardier, single-bearing ewes for the uplands. According to the National Sheep Association (NSA),…

SHEEP

Experiment shows potential for cell-grazing herbal leys

Cell-grazing promotes greater sward growth and weight of lambs weaned a hectare than continuous grazing. And cell-grazing herbal leys, or multispecies swards, has the potential to outperform less diverse ones.…

SHEEP

A buyer's guide to sheep management software

With the current uncertainty around Brexit’s impact on the sheep sector, who knows what the new year has in store. But one thing that is becoming increasingly apparent is the…

ASSESSING PERFORMANCE

5 new livestock gadgets for farming in 2020

From innovation to slightly improved design, engineers and inventors are constantly striving to produce the next big gadget in livestock farming.  Farmers Weekly has looked at the top products that…

LIVESTOCK

4 sheep recording methods compared: which one is best?

Carmarthenshire sheep farmer and Aberystwyth University graduate Huw Williams completed a HCC scholarship in 2015 looking at how extensive systems in New Zealand and Australia were recording parentage. Talking about…

SHEEP

Research shows value of monitoring ewe body condition

New research has shown just how valuable it is to record and monitor body condition in commercial ewe flocks and keep it consistent year-round.   Independent sheep consultant Lesley Stubbings…

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