Lambs, heifers, visitors, Pony Club and broken arms

We have had a busy week. 

This week saw the start of our pre-weaning lamb drenching regime, with the start of weaning and planned for 10 days time.  The focus last week was on our terminal lambs (Suffolk rams to our B flock ewes).

Some of the first pick lambs hopefully!

Set of terminal triplets

Set of terminal twins



We have sent away the first of our heifers to the works
 getting 227 kg CW/hd average.  In the last fortnight,
 the heifers had been doing 2kg+/hd/day.



Hereford Heifers



 



Some of the dairy heifers returning to their paddock after a B12
 injection with skies darkening in the background.

 

A different mob of dairy heifers.
 

It was a pleasure to get wet this morning!

It was a pleasure to get wet this morning but it seems that our rain was short lived.  We have been getting pretty dry, as has the rest of the North Island.  We were fairly late in being impacted by it with rough feed on board and the grass hanging in, but over the last couple of weeks things have certainly changed.  The base pasture in the hill paddocks has basically gone, cracks opened up, leaving only some pickings for the stock.

So far today we have had 15 mls.  Looking back at our rainfall records, it has been the driest quarters since we have been here:

• Nov - Jan 172 mls v's 304 average (56% rainfall)
• Dec - Feb 245 mls v's 344 average (71% rainfall)
• Jan - Mar 157 mls v's 295 average (53% rainfall)

On Sunday we drove from Auckland to home in the rain, but the rain and the puddles stopped one valley before home.  So whilst Auckland had 15 mls, Onewhero 10 mls, we had none.

We have been feeding out since the beginning of March, and based on our feed budgets, would expect us to continue this into May.  Our target priority mobs to feed are our Dairy Grazers, getting silage, and the R2s getting poplar.  They are all due to be weighed this month.  Our Ewes went to the ram 1st March at condition score 3.5 across both maternal and terminal.  On the whole they seem to be holding their own.  The rams will come out next week.  Our beef cattle are fared ok with 0.4 kg/day.  They have been grazing the rough stuff and doing a bit of cleanup so hadn't expected any better than this.

Our lambs have struggled as quality feed as disappeared.  So far we have managed to meet all the contract targets but with the dressing out % being down, our carcass weights haven't been the best.  We are probably carrying a few too many lambs on and will need to shift them in the coming months.  Lambs will all be weighed on Saturday with a pick going out the following week.

Our focus now is to ensure key stock are holding or improving, with our beef cattle being the buffer.  Focus turns to giving the grass opportunity to grow.  The new grass paddocks are holding their own and bouncing back well after rain.  Key paddocks on both blocks have been targeted with lime at 1.5 t/ha via aircraft.   This was applied 2 days before we had rain in mid-March - perfect timing!

This time of year also brings challenges of FE, with all our dairy grazers given a Time Capsule and their 2nd capsule going in next week.  We do spore counts on each block on the dairy grazers rotation.  One block has been holding around 10,000, whilst the other has been sitting 40,000 +.  We are awaiting this weeks results.  We are not worried about the sheep as all sires purchased have high FE tolerance. 

It is that time of the year when budgets are reviewed through to end of June and for the following 2013/14 year.  Lamb prices have certainly played a hindrance in this years budget and we are back quite significantly.  Going forward, conservative prices have been adhered to in the budget - anything over and above is a bonus.  We are expecting a few less lambs as we are not mating the hoggets and keeping scanning/lambing figures realistic as not sure what the impact of the dry will be in the long run.  To counter that though, we have managed to get rid of all the 'old' ewes that were originally bought on the farm, and now all ewes on the place we have bred ourselves and have the potential to do better lambing percentages.

Fingers crossed we get a bit more rain ... ideally need at least 100 mls to make a difference and some warm days to get the grass growing.

Lambs, lambs and more lambs

Well it feels like it should be near the end of the year.   For the last couple of weeks, it feels as though there has been lots of sheep work.  I think I mentioned in my last blog we were pre-wean drenching our terminal lambs.  Well, that was followed by doing all the maternal lambs too.

We then bought home all our terminal ewes and lambs on Friday 16th ... a slow walk up the road but luckily the day wasn't too hot.

We then drafted off what looked like big lambs and weighed these over the scales on the Saturday and crutched whatever needed crutching.  Saturday was one of those days when we were grateful that we had invested in some covered-in yards, as the day deteriorated into rain ... not that we were complaining because we were in need of our 21 mls.  The roof overhead, certainly made working in the rain much more enjoyable.

We managed to get the job done and washed up in time to welcome our dinner guest!

Sunday morning we were up 5.30am, mustered in the ewes and lambs and drafted off all the marked lambs.  We had only contract booked 200 lambs, but in reality we should have booked around 350!  Terminal lambs had done better than planned.  Despite our contract numbers going up each year, we are still underestimating what we can achieve.  The average weaning weight of our terminal lambs was 32 kg which means half of our lambs could have been killed off mum!  Pretty good going for us!

By 7.00 am the 223 lambs were winging there way to Te Kuiti Meats (with 2 other loads to pick up on the way).

Monday we weighed all the lambs and weaned everything in the terminal mob.  The ewes had to sit round home until Friday 24th for shearing, so the holding paddocks are well eaten out.  We shore the terminal ewes and went through and culled all the old girls (the original ewes purchased in 2008).  Some of them were 6, 7 and 8 years old.  A handful (approx 50) have had a second chance if in good condition and good udder as we haven't quite got enough replacements to get rid of all.  All the 'keepers' were taken back down the road, whilst the 'culls' had to wait till this morning for their terminal ride.  Not enough space at the works, so with 150 gone, another 100 to go.

Then inbetween we have weaned, tagged, weighed and crutched (only dirties), all our maternal ewes and lambs.  Some weaning was good and some wasn't.  The 2-tooth mobs weaned 29kg average, whilst our maternal twins did worse at 26 kg, and singles at 30kg.  Overall average 28kg.  There will be a bit of tweaking to that as some of our male lambs came through twice and haven't sorted the files out yet.  I also have yet to revise our lambing % based on lambs weaned to ewes scanned due to the extras tagged at weaning.  Need a rainy quite day to catch up!

Despite all that, another 160 lambs left this morning bound for Te Kuiti.  It was up at 5.00am to get the lambs drafted off the ewes to meet the 6.30am truck.  We were all loaded and truck departing by 7.30am.

The first lambs (terminal) didn't yield as well as would have liked - 45%, down 1-2% for milk lambs.  The black faces did 16.9 kg CW and the white faces did 16.4 kg CW.

Weaned ewes and ewe lambs this morning

Couldn't resist - Alice with two goats who had made their home between the press boxes!

Today is a quiter day, catch up. The ewe lambs have been left with mum for the day, and tomorrow we will draft off the ewe lambs, empty out and pen up for shearing, due to start on Thursday. We will shear all maternal ewes and ewe lambs over two days, before catching breath again. 

Next jobs lined up are drenching the works lambs and sorting into 2 lines based on weight, weaning our hoggets and shearing all hoggets.

Catching up with the lambs

We are getting ready for our first draft of lambs which go the week of 18th November.  This will also correspond with weaning and shearing.

So Monday/Tuesday were late days doing the terminals ... not so good for the school girl.

Monday we mustered into the holding paddock in the morning one mob.  They had plenty of feed to occupy themselves whilst we shot off to the Nikau Coopworth (http://www.nikaucoopworth.co.nz/index.html) ram sale at Tuakau.  We had a shopping list for 5 rams, but only came away with 2.  We had short listed our rams down to about 8 that we were interested in, 2 weren't presented on sale day and one more not confident on their feet.  We tried to mix and mingle the sires up a bit, but the majority of our selected rams all came from the one sire.  We have a few other options up our sleeve, so hopefully we can get the other 3 on board without too much trouble.

Having got back on Monday, we waited for the school bus and then headed for the yards.  We drenched all the lambs with a pre-wean drench, and marked all the 'old ewes'.  These are the originals that came with the farm.  Our goal is to cull as many of them out this year, depending on replacement numbers.  I then drafted out any untagged lambs and any lamb close to works weight.

We ended up tagging 74 lambs, which was about 32 more than I had already estimated.  This has lifted our overall lambing percentage up about another 1%.  There are still a handful yet to do, either I missed them in the drafting race or they were missed in the muster.

Tuesday we walked the hills twice to muster two different mobs and do the same things again, in what was 2 hot days. 

We were interupted Tuesday afternoon with the vet visit to give the dogs their annual vaccination and to meet the school bus.

The end result we are pretty much on target for our first draft of 200 lambs to go, which equates to 26% of total terminal lambs off mum.  For us this is good.

Terminal and those without tags waiting to be weighed and tagged

Waiting to go up the race

 
On Wednesday we managed to dock our hogget lambs.  We docked 111% in the paddock and 51% to hoggets scanned.  Our scanning % was 66%, therefore our losses are 24%.  The hoggets themselves are looking in good condition and the lambs, whilst a month behind the maternals, docked probably slightly behind the weight of the maternal lambs.  The goal now is to keep the hoggets well feed up to weaning, which will be around 8th December, as ewes are a third more efficient in converting energy whilst lactating.   This gives us close to 2600 lambs which is above our target.


Hoggets and their lambs after docking

This coming week we plan to do the same to the Maternal lambs, so some long days ahead and in a busy week with lots of things on.



How did lambing go?

One of our goals was to get all our docking done by the end of September whilst Katja was still with us.  We managed to do this and hit good weather too.  We do have our hoggets to go which are ready to be docked anytime from now on.

First day of docking was 13th September.  We started with a small mob to make sure all the bits and pieces were set up right and working.  We bought them up the lane and into the yards and new shed.

Bringing the first mob of ewes and lambs home

Katja's first lamb pick up and the first lamb to be docked this season

Mal and Katja working - Katja loading the cradle, I tagged and earmarked, and Mal did the tails

 This year we splashed out and bought a docking iron - scissors this time, to replace old plunging iron.  It seemed to work well and allowed us to manage the tail length better than the old one.  On my couple of goes with the new iron, I didn't need as many muscles as it cut through the tail easily.

 

Alice in the penful of lambs

Tagging set up

This year we decided to tag all the lambs at docking with EID tags.  Above is our homemade system, made out of two old drench containers, and the disinfectant container on the right.  After 2300 lambs, I made about 8 mistakes ... not too bad really.

  

Katja with her dog and whistle

While Katja was here, we gave her her own dog (dishwashing powder bottle filled with stones) and whistle.  Sorry Katja, I have forgotten what you called your dog!  I don't think Katja mastered the whistle at all during her stay, but I know the dog pictured above didn't survive, and was replaced with a 3 litre milk bottle.

Maternal ewe and lambs in the top yards

Lunch break at the top yards

Ryan keeping the cradle full, but it only takes two terminal lambs

Terminal ewe and lambs on the other block

We docked in smaller mobs this year, taking the pressure of the days and working with when we could get labour.  It took us 8 days to dock 2300 lambs.

We were relative pleased with our lambing percentage this year, with 15% losses from scanning.
Our maternal ewes achieved 144% to ewes scanned and our terminals a poorly 110%.  The terminal ewes are the last of the original ewes, which will hopefully be culled this year, so looking forward we would expect this to lift.  Ultimately, it is the number of lambs that survive to the truck + replacements that need to be calculated back to show how successful lambing has been.

Our next task is to give all the lambs a pre-wean drench.  Having gone through evaluation of drenches, whether to include a tape drench or not, we have decided to go for a tape drench - First.  There is some research that suggest a pre-wean drench is beneficial for both ewe and lamb.  The impact of whether to use a tape drench or not, is a bit more mixed, but some trials had shown a positive outcome.  We are looking at weaning terminals the week 18th November and the Maternals the following week (25th November).  Then we will be into shearing, weighing, condition scoring and more drenching! 

March in a Nutshell

For us March has been a quiet time and I apologise for the lack of blogs but we managed to squeeze in a holiday.

First a glance at what has happened on the farm.

1st March, or thereabouts, the rest of the rams were introduced to the ewes.  This was touched on in the last blog.

We weighed up the last of our lambs, gave them a drench and parked them to go to the works in March.  They were suppose to have gone, but have been delayed a week due to a mishap at the works.  They have done well in the meantime, so fingers crossed for a good carcass weight.

End of February, saw us doing the whole farm covers.  Despite the growthy season we were sitting at 2100 kgDM/ha cover over the whole farm, with the finishing country at 2350 kg DM/ha average.  There is some rough feed on the hills, but this will slowly be consumed through the rest of autumn.  The finishing country is looking in good health.

The dairy heifers received their second zinc bolus treatment against Facial Eczema.  Spore counts have maintained slight to high (http://www.rd1.com/dairy/facial-eczema/waikato-spore-counts) but are below last years peaks.  The weaners were all weighed at this time and have averaged 0.67 kg/hd/day over 100 days (for kiwi cross).  Making them 169.4 kg average.  This puts in line with industry of between 165 - 177 kg at 200 days approximately from birth.  If we can maintain 0.65 kg/hd/day over next 60 days or better, will but them at 210 kg 1st May.

We then sneaked away for holiday, and were lucky enough to find Craig who moved in and looked after the place.  He did an absolutely wonderful job doing all the stock movement, a bit of fencing, looking after the dogs, chooks and cat, and when we came back we just had to carry on.  Great peace of mind while we were away and often as farmers we can't get long breaks due to the requirements on farm.

On our return, we had also had the digger in.  Main role was to metal the high use areas of the yards, remove dirt/mud from truck access area, metal it, put in a culvert and recontour our lawn.  So things a looking a litte different. 


Trees gone and dirt added!  Might get to have a flat front lawn!

With Alice camping at Ma and Pa's house for 13 days, she was pleased to get home and has been helping dad out on the farm this week.  Today though we decided to take her training wheels off and after the usual moral support and help, she was off without her wheels.  We have little suitable area for her to bike on about from up and down the drive which is good getting down, not easy to get back, and lots of bumps.  So today we suggested she tries the sheep yards.

Alice trainer wheel free in the sheep yards

And then we persuaded her to cycle back from the yards to the house and hoped that she could remember to use her breaks before she crashed into the gate.  The sheep were a bit sceptical of her and made a b-line to get out of her way.

We are all tired ...

It has been a busy week down on the farm.  All of the maternal ewes and lambs have been weaned, all the dirty ones crutched, weighed all the lambs, and have shorn all the ewes and ewe lamb replacements.



Fridolin trying his hand at crutching



First day of shearing, one of the shearers hurt his hand about 1/2 hour into the run, so we were down to 2 shearers until about midway of 2nd run, until a relief shearer arrived. 



Shearing snaps



Tally for first day was 206 ewes and 446 replacements.

Tally for second day was 873 ewes, 3 lambs and 18 rams.



presser putting the wool in the press

We sorted through all our ewes and are putting 189 light ewes with our hoggets, and 130 ewes have gone to the terminal mob, with 8 culls.  The average weight of ewes were 58 kg and 2.94 CS. Target is to maintain ewes at this at minimum, with a target of raising at least 0.5 of a CS before tupping in March.

Weaning, the ram lambs averaged 31.15 kg and the ewe lambs 27.93 kg, giving an overall average of 29.56 kg.  For our maternal mob, this is up on previous years. As are the ewe weights and condition. 

Also this week, we trucked out 101 of our maternal male lambs, averaged 17.4 kg CW and 102 of our cull terminal ewes, all to Te Kuiti Meats.

Cull Ewes waiting in anticipation

2nd draft of lambs awaiting the truck

Waiting to get loaded



The truck that came to take them away



The much needed rain has arrived today, as we put away stock in their paddocks, and shift the cattle, before having a rest of what is left of a Sunday!

New Season Lambs

With a week to go now till the start of weaning, all the lambs on the property have been given their pre-weaning drench.  That means approximately 2100 lambs have been through the yards for the week starting 6th November. 

The terminals, which are primarily Romney/Suffolk crosses appeared to be doing well, with our first contracted load to be trucked out identified.  We did these in 3 separate mobs, just to make the days smaller.  Also, on the first day, the weather turned for the worst, making everything and everyone a bit wet.

Fridolin had his first go at drenching.  A little harder to do than it looks like.  As seen below, Fridolin's technique needs a bit of fine turning.  Two things wrong is the pulling of the head back and the closing of the mouth with fingers.  Later on he got to do some more and we have worked on the technique to make it comfortable for both the drencher and the lamb.  The aim is to get the nozzle on top of the tongue so that the dose of drench goes down the throat and is not wasted by either getting squirted out or spat out. 

Fridolin's first attempt at drenching.

Alice keeping an eye on Fridolin

This year we have used Startech on our Terminal lambs.  We also weighed and marked a sample mob of lambs under 30kg that were given Startech and the other mob First, to see what weight gains have been achieved in 15 days time when the animals are weaned.

Lamb in the weigh crate - this one is 36 kg

All lambs that look to be over 30 kg were weighed.  This is done by self as we drafted off the ewes and the two lines of lambs (above 30 kg and below 30 kg).  This means that drench can be applied at a more relevant dose rate to their weight and also saves time in putting lambs over scales.

Coming up in the next couple of weeks we have weaning, lamb picking and shearing on the horizon.

Meanwhile Fridolin will take his first extended break by heading off on his bike around the Waikato from Tuesday - Sunday.