Farmer Focus: Shearlings scan poorly at 145%

Scanning has got to be the most nerve-wracking day in the diary of a sheep farmer. We have struggled with our scanning rate for the past few years and one of our main aims is to increase it.

So far this year we have scanned our B flock – which lambs indoors to a terminal sire – and yet again we have been left disappointed.

Shearlings in this flock have consistently scanned at about 145%, whether they have lambed as ewe lambs or, like this group, run dry.

See also: CT scanning helps detect superior genetics in sheep

About the author

Louise Elkington

Louise Elkington runs 500 breeding ewes in Lincolnshire with husband Chris for their Gelston lamb brand, supplying restaurants, 13 Co-op stores and their online shop. They have 54ha of grass on a farm business tenancy and agreements for stubble turnips and hay aftermaths.

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We are starting to think it could be genetics that just aren’t prolific enough, as we have just about ruled out everything else with them.

The rest of the B flock is made up of ewes from the A flock that haven’t performed well enough, to give them one last chance. This could explain why they have  scanned at only 170%.

In an ideal world we would cull them, but it’s a tricky balance trying to increase numbers when we are also trying to keep the flock closed.

We have heard that quite a few flocks are scanning lower than normal, which is probably down to how dry it was last year.

Our ewes were in sacrifice fields on haylage for a good couple of months, trying to give the grass a chance to grow to keep lambs rotationally grazing around the farm.

This all seems a distant memory now, with the dust turned to mud, and floods for some.

We have just a few weeks to wait till we scan our A flock, which lambs outside to our maternal sires.

A few shearlings in this group lambed as ewe lambs, so it will be interesting to see how they scan compared with the shearlings that ran dry last year.

An ideal scan for us would be 185%. We don’t want lots of triplets, especially when lambing outside, as it makes adopting trickier – although not impossible.

On a positive note, having looked at our figures more closely since becoming an AHDB Strategic Farm, we have realised our losses have been as low as 8% to rearing.

So, if we could increase our scan to 185%, we would have more lambs to retain or to put through our butchery.