Archive Article: 2000/08/04
John Martin
John Martin farms with his
parents on the Ards Peninsula
south of Belfast. The 65ha
(160-acre) Gordonall Farm
and 16ha (40 acres) of
rented land carry 400
Suffolk x Cheviot ewes, a
small flock of Suffolks and
40 spring calving sucklers.
About 20ha (50 acres) of
barley is grown
GIVEN the weather of the last few weeks, it looks like St Swithin had his shorts and shades on this year, and although 40 days havent yet passed, the countryside is showing signs of extreme moisture stress.
Grass growth has been non-existent and any areas of rocky land have turned white. Until now we have had enough grass for livestock, but that will soon change if we dont see a significant amount of rain soon.
The only compensation is that stock are relatively content in the warm weather, with a lower maintenance requirement. Second cut silage taken at the end of July also suffered in terms of bulk, but should be adequate along with the bumper first cut.
Winter barley has been harvested and forage rape sowed for January lambing ewes next spring. Having had three weeks flushing, 140 early lambing ewes were joined by teasers on July 23 and will be followed by the real thing 10 days later; we plan to start lambing between Christmas and New Year.
Later lambing ewes were weaned before the end of July and the last culls sold making up to £21 for those in better condition, despite a fall in lamb price to 170p/kg deadweight.
The first lambs from our trial have now been slaughtered, at pre-determined weights from 34kg to 52kg liveweight. Carcasses are being examined to assess meat yield across all breeds on trial.
At a recent open day to discuss findings so far a number of points were made. Easy-care ewes turned out to grass one month before lambing showed potential to reduce costs compared with sheep housed until after lambing.
Birth weights for lambs born outdoors increased across all trial farms, leading to more lambing difficulties and mortalities at birth.
It appears that grass dry matter allowance of 3kg/sheep/day, coupled with high grass growth rates during March caused these losses and more work has been done to allocate the grass neededmore accurately.
However, post-lambing losses were lower in the easy-care group so there is little difference in final numbers produced. It will be interesting to see how we fare in less suitable lambing weather.
St Swithin has been smiling on Northern Ireland, says John Martin.