Farmer Focus: Haylage stocks hold out after lambing

Feeding ewes haylage in May is a first for us here at Gelston.

We have split all our fields into fours and started to rotationally graze, to try and make the grass last and give each section as much time as possible to rest and grow.

See also: 5 things to consider before ditching sheep supplements

About the author

Louise Elkington

Louise Elkington runs 500 breeding ewes and a small suckler herd in Lincolnshire with husband Chris. Gelston Lamb sells all meat produced on the farm through pop-up shops, deliveries and catering. They have 54ha (133 acres) of grass on a farm business tenancy and agreements for stubble turnips and hay aftermaths.

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Feeding haylage on a system like this is a pain, as the haylage needs to be moved every two days.

To combat this problem, Chris manufactured a ring feeder with a bottom on it, so it can be moved with the telehandler when we move the sheep.

The lambs soon get the hang of moving with the ewes over the fence, so after a few days we don’t even need the dog to move them.

The cows have now all calved and are looking really well. Like the sheep, these are on haylage in the field.

Our intention was for the cows to follow behind the sheep in their rotation, but with the lack of grass, there is just no point.

Hopefully, when we finally get rain and the grass starts to grow, we can start doing this.

We still had a nice amount of haylage left after lambing, having got them out so quickly. It’s a good job we did as it’s going down rapidly now.

In our outdoor lambing flock, we suspected we had a problem, so we ran some bloods.

Results came back that yet again they were low in iodine.

When we had this problem a few years ago, we solved it by going back to using a pre-tupping bolus instead of a lick made up for the farm. However, it now seems that one bolus just isn’t lasting long enough.

We will now try using a bolus pre-tupping and pre-lambing, which will hopefully do the trick. No doubt another issue will arise next year!

The past month has been incredibly hard for us as a family after losing Chris’s dad unexpectedly.

It really does make you stop and look at life and how precious and delicate it can be.

With the pressures of farming livestock, running a busy butchery and catering in full swing, we’ve really appreciated our friends, family and small team of staff who have supported us through this sad time.