Livestock Farmer Focus: John Bainbridge is busy selling fat lambs

With the good spell of weather continuing, I am currently selling fat lambs every week using both live and dead markets depending on which I think will give the best value.

As a consequence of the six-day ruling, the purchasing of suckler cow replacements or a few female sheep is nearly out of the question at this time of the year. The ruling only seems to inhibit trading and cause unnecessary movements of livestock, with one farmer helping another out. The most common sense approach would be to isolate stock on your own holding for six days after they have been purchased.

All our mule gimmers have now gone except for the last 45 to be kept as replacements. These along with our Swaledale gimmers are ready to go away to their winter keep.

The reading of EID tags at markets appears to have gone well. I encountered two methods for reading tags. The use of a stick reader had perfect results, but meant people were entering the pens causing some extra stress to the lambs. The less labour intensive race system was not always fully successful at reading tags, but caused no inconvenience to the sale and worked well.

So the cycle begins again. The crossing ewes are being fluked, tailed, footvaxed and copper bolussed in preparation for mating. Ewe condition varies with the thinner ones been given a trace element supplement.

This weekend sees the harvest festival where we will be reminded of sowing and reaping. After recently investing in three Bluefaced Leicester rams we are hoping their seeds will be fertile and we can reap the rewards.