CUT COSTS, BUT NOT CORNERS
CUT COSTS, BUT NOT CORNERS
What can be done to keep
feed costs to an optimum
this winter? Independent
sheep consultant
Lesley Stubbings offers
some timely advice
ALL the talk about the need to cut costs this winter is not surprising because although lamb prices held up well until mid-August, the threat of large numbers carried over into winter, a consistently strong £ and falling skin prices mean that we are unlikely to see lamb prices improve significantly.
Feed costs account for a large proportion of variable costs of a sheep flock and are a natural target when savings are sought. However, experience shows that a reduction in these costs usually results in a negative effect on margins because of lower lamb numbers and value.
This is because unless a feeding strategy is properly thought out, reducing inputs simply means leaner ewes, lower birth weights, poor colostrum and milk yields and higher lamb losses. Any shepherd will tell you that a ewe can only perform to her full potential if she is well fed. Corners cannot be cut, but there is scope to make sure that feed inputs are used efficiently.
Where you want to put this to the test, the following steps will help save money and should help, not hinder, performance.
• Step One: Use body condition as a guide to need for supplementary feeding. This much maligned technique is critical to success of an efficient feeding regime. Monitor condition regularly by handling ewes and use it to make up groups.
In the pre-tupping period aim to avoid the need for supplements by planning ahead and getting ewes in correct condition for tupping. Condition and supplementary feeding are not additive.
Where a ewe is in correct body condition supplements will not enhance performance further. Group leaner ewes together for extra feeding. Ewes are designed to store energy when there is grass available and use it later when times are harder – use that fact and get their condition right while they are dry.
Aim to maintain condition in mid-pregnancy and later use it to sort out any ewes which are in need of earlier supplementation. When you scan, use this together with condition not instead of it.
• Step Two: Where you want to use feed efficiently, analyse forage and develop a ration which will maximise forage intakes throughout late pregnancy. This classic inefficiency occurs every year. Good forages are wasted because ewes are stuffed with concentrates. The better the forage, the greater the waste incurred.
The ewe is often treated more like a pig than a ruminant in late pregnancy and then we wonder why she succumbs to conditions such as acidosis, pregnancy toxaemia, hypocalcaemia.
Just remember that when you feed a sheep, you are in effect feeding the rumen and asking it to provide her with the bulk of her nutrition. The rumen is designed to digest fibre and it cannot respond quickly to change. This is why, given a clear choice, I would always feed a complete diet to ewes.
In practice, cost prohibits this option, but we can use flatter feeding regimes and encourage forage intakes in late pregnancy. What about prolapse? The fact is that if you keep the rumen functioning properly, monitor body condition and get mineral balances right you will see fewer cases of prolapse, not more.
• Step Three: Dont cut corners on concentrate quality. Many flocks fell foul of cheap compounds last winter and paid the price in ewe condition and lamb birthweights. Look at a compound in terms of cost a unit of energy. Dont assume that high protein means high energy, and crude protein content is not a guide to quality. Always look at products at the top of the range where you are feeding ewes expected to produce two lambs or more, and get some independent advice when choice is not clear.
• Step Four: Cut out unnecessary costs. Make sure your compound takes care of vitamin and mineral requirements, dont offer ad lib minerals in addition, just offer rock salt.
Use frozen ewe or cow colostrum to top up at lambing. This practice has dwindled over the last few years, presumably because alternatives are easier to use. The reality is that they cost many times more and consequently are not used as liberally as they should be.
Colostrum is vital. Moredun Institute trials showed that not a single lamb contracted watery mouth when it received enough colostrum within three hours of birth. It is the best form of protection and available free. It also avoids the need to give routine antibiotic to lambs at birth, something which seems to be becoming an all too common practice. Get into the habit of using colostrum whenever there is any doubt that a lamb has had enough.
All the steps above should help not only to reduce costs, but improve output. Never cut a cost if you think that productivity will suffer because the effect on your margin will always be negative. *
CUTTINGFEEDCOSTS
• Consider body condition.
• Analyse forage.
• Good quality concentrate.
• Cut unnecessary costs.