Targets to boost your livestock farm’s profit

The end of the year signals a time of business performance reviews for many farmers; a time for reflection and review in the hope improvements can be made. EBLEX and BPEX have put together five key target areas that could help improve performance and profitability on your farm
Sheep
- Optimise your lambing percentage for your system.
- Record your losses (from scanning to lambing, at lambing, lambing to weaning) – for more information see the EBLEX BRP manual Reducing Lamb Losses for Better Returns.
- Monitor ewe body condition score (BCS) throughout the year.
- Ensure lambs are fit not fat by selecting them at the optimum time, correct weight and level of finish.
- Do your enterprise costings.
Beef
- Keep your bulling period to a maximum of 12 weeks.
- Pregnancy diagnose (PD) all cows to identify those that are empty.
- Monitor suckler cow body condition score (BCS) throughout the year.
- Select finished cattle at the optimum time, correct weight and level of finish for your target outlet.
- Do your enterprise costings.
Pigs
- Ensure accurate recording to minimise empty days in the breeding herd, and enable efficient planning, to help reduce cost of production
- Focus on effective gilt management – ensure age at service, heat recording and aftercare following first service are optimised.
- Improve piglet numbers born alive and weaned by about one pig a litter, as an initial target.
- Reduce feed conversion ratio – aim for reduction of 0.1 – and also think about reducing feed wastage via spillages, for example.
- Reduce mortality, both pre and post-weaning.
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