Archive Article: 2000/01/28
Giles Henry
Giles Henry rents 105ha
(260 acres) on a 10-year
lease and 114ha (280 acres)
of heather moorland near
Selkirk in the Scottish
Borders. Cropping is mainly
grass with 10ha (24 acres) of
spring barley. It is stocked
with 650 breeding ewes and
95 hoggs, 30 Luing cattle
with followers and finishers
RATHER belatedly I wish everyone a happy New Year, and may the year 2000 bring everything you wish for.
Our first lamb was born on Jan 6 – a week later and we have only 25 ewes left to lamb. These are mainly ewes which returned to the tup about 15 days after their first cycle, so I can relax for a couple of weeks until they are due to lamb.
Ewes are milking well and lambs are being born a good size. We have not had too many problems since starting, although the day before the first live lamb was born, we had two abortions and one ewe decided to push her insides out rather than her lambs.
Recently another ewe that was in jail because she had rejected one of her lambs decided to pop her clogs. Oh, the joys of lambing.
Our May lambing ewes have had tups with them since Dec 20 and appear to have been served pretty well. Whereas ewe hoggs have tups in with them for only 21 days.
All May lambing ewes have been fed 0.23kg/head/day (0.5lbs) of barley since Dec 5, and will continue to have this until tups come out on Jan 24. Then they will be put in larger lots and fed hay until theres a bite of grass in spring. Ewe hoggs will continue to be offered barley and hay.
Cows on the hill are in good condition, receiving just 1.8kg/head (4lb) of a beet pulp and dark grains mix. Later calving cows have now been weaned and returned to the hill.
All housed calves are doing well on 1.8kg/head (4lb) of barley and ad lib straw. We sold our bull calves privately to a finisher in early December for 102p/kg liveweight.
I also decided to sell the store lambs we had left in December. I calculated that by the time I had fattened them, and taken account of feeding and labour costs, I would be better off with money in the bank.
Lamb marketing is over for another season, and theres little to dwell on. Lets hope lambs being born now give us a better return.
Giles Henry is celebrating the joys of lambing; despite a few teething problems early on, things havent been too bad so far.