Farmer Focus: Lambing losses hit hard after thorough prep
James Kimber © Kathy Horniblow I have been really knocked backwards by lambing. I had thought all the planning was in place and was really looking forward to it.
The silage was the best ever, all the ewes were in good condition, all vaccinations and mineral boluses done on time. Bloods indicated feeding was spot on.
Foot-bathing and liming yards were done to start lambing flying. We turned out onto new seeds and expected to just watch the lambs grow.
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Sadly, that hasn’t happened. After a few days of normal problems at the start of lambing, we then had a pattern of no milk emerge.
Ewes from all the different groups quite randomly would not have a drop. These lambs then had to have powdered colostrum, which is far from good, and resulted in a lot of losses from E coli.Â
To top that, our paid lambing assistant left at the busiest time.
Fortunately, Richard had a long Easter break, Isla, our apprentice, took up extra work, and an excellent vet student learned extremely quickly. Bee and I just did our usual thing: put our heads down and got on with it.
With the ewes going out onto seeds, we have been mag bolusing for many years now, but even that hasn’t worked this year, with hot days and frosty nights stressing them out.
Finding ewes with great lambs dying next to the mag lick bucket really is draining emotionally.
After another batch of blood testing, some ewes have come up positive for border disease.
Our vet is saying that as the bunches of sheep were only mixed at housing, some of the bought-in ones had it, infecting naive ewes.
That would explain no milk and a few too many stillborn lambs.
All lambs have now had their first Ovivac vaccination. Hopefully, the new leys will mean no worms, but we’ll do some faecal egg counts while the ewes are gathered for flyspraying ahead of shearing.
Meanwhile, bull prep was going well for Charolais at Welshpool and Simmental at Carlisle, until I used a really good bull to try to get a repeating cow in-calf.
It looks like he has pulled something in his hip or back. Currently resting, he should be OK, but it is typical of my current run.