High-fibre diet is key to Swaledale finishing

A fibrous whole-crop diet that’s being fed to lambs grazing a clover-rich sward is producing top quality Swaledales throughout the winter on a North Yorkshire hill farm.

In a break from more traditional upland lamb finishing regimes, the Greenwood family from Walburn Hall Farms, Downholme, Richmond, will finish about 600 home-bred Swaledale lambs on the system this winter, aiming for weights of 18-20kg to meet a deadweight specification of R3L and R3H.

The Greenwood’s business is based on 780ha (1950 acres), which includes 586ha (1450 acres) of heather-fell rising to 1500ft. The farm carries a 200-cow herd of pure Limousin cows run commercially and producing pure-bred Limousin suckled calves. The sheep stock comprises 1100 Swaledale ewes – 900 bred pure and 200 put to Bluefaced Leicesters.

The Swaledale flock is lambed outdoors in April and after conventional summer management the lambs are weaned in mid-August and moved on to silage aftermaths and meadows.

But despite its location, this farm has a grassland management policy that makes the most use of clover-rich swards to provide high quality grazing throughout the winter. And it’s by combining the availability of ample amounts of grazed grass with a fibrous supplementary feed that the successful lamb finishing system has been developed.

“It’s something we’ve devised ourselves. We use the whole-crop forage for the store cattle and felt it could do a good job with the lambs and compliment the clover-sward,” says Bruce Greenwood.

With the intention of starting to sell lambs from mid-October, the most forward Swaledale wether lambs are drawn – weighing 35kg liveweight – and switched to the grass/hopper system offering additional feed via the bought-in whole-crop forage.

The moist, high-fibre diet is whole-crop wheat bought as a standing crop and clamped. It’s mixed with a 16% coarse blend to provide the complete hopper ration.

Although a devotee of the benefits of clover in a grass sward, Mr Greenwood believes the addition of the fibrous whole-crop to the diet is “the secret” to achieving good growth rates, high levels of intake and healthy lambs.

“The clover provides plenty of protein in the grass, but the added fibre from the whole-crop makes a big improvement in the growth rate. Swaledales have the potential to produce a really high quality carcass lamb, but growth rates can be affected if the diet is too rich and lacking in fibre – something often caused by feeding high levels of lamb finisher rations without adequate fibre.

“By adding some blend to the forage means lambs are drawn back to the hopper, but it’s the whole-crop – both the wheat and the straw – that’s really making the difference to the lambs’ performance,” says Bruce Greenwood.

Meadows at Walburn Hall Farms are direct drilled in the spring with white-clover – about 2kg an acre – to “freshen up the sward”.

“The pH level of the sward is very important to the success of this system and we’ve used pH enhancers like basic slag to help us get it right. We’ve really cut back on N use because the clover is giving us all the N we need. But despite that it doesn’t mean we can afford to ease off on the management of the meadows.

“Because we aren’t using compound fertiliser we need to give the clover time to establish so we only graze over the top of it to start with and then move stock on after a few days. We aim for a target of 6-6.5pH to help the clover become established,” says Mr Greenwood.

The system developed at Walburn Hall Farms has also been driven by a commitment to producing top quality prime Swaledale lambs from a natural grazing system and not one that relies solely on hopper feeding.

“If we fed these lambs inside on hoppers on an intensive system it wouldn’t produce us the type or quality of carcass lamb we want to sell – and it wouldn’t match the natural, outdoor image we believe the breed has to capitalise on in order to win new markets for Swaledale prime lamb.

“We don’t have a set time for lambs to be on the hoppers or a fixed finished weight. Every lamb is an individual; it’s about level of finish rather than weight gained.”

Mr Greenwood says it’s the protein from the clover in the sward plus the energy from the whole-crop that’s providing an ideal combination for growth, intake and healthy lambs. “This diet is delivering correct amounts of protein and energy and it’s spot-on for putting flesh to the lambs.”