Scanning Update

A wet Sunday afternoon, a quick update on our sheep scanning that we did on 29th May.  We managed to get all our sheep shorn, thanks to the covered yards (now a year old!).  We did things a bit different this year, shearing Mixed Age (MA) and 2-tooths from the home block first on 21 - 22nd May and then shore the Terminals from the other block on 26th May.  Shearing went without a hitch, except for the ability to get the wool out of the shed.  With two bikes and two trailers, shifting 4 bales at a time, we managed to load out the 22 bales with relative ease.

Things certainly turned in May, from the dry in the proceeding months (157 mls Jan - March) to 145 mmls in April and 280 mls in May (110 mls more than we had in any other May in the last 5 years).  Another 40mls to add to the June rain chart things are starting to get soggey underfoot.

29th May we scanned all the ewes in one day rather than two separate days as we had done in the past.  The general wider talk is that scanning percentages will be back based on the drought experienced.  We were grateful that our scanning faired well, with the Terminals and MA ewes scanning the same as last year and our 2-tooths were up 18%. 

Taratahi Students and others helping out at scanning

The ewes got a dose of Cypercare as they went up the race.



The ewes were in good condition going into tupping at around 64kg and 3.5 BCS, only a tad back on previous years.  During tupping they largely held condition through the two and half cycles to 12th April when the rams came out.  The drought broke mid-April and with the rapid growth of the pastures, stock have struggled since then, so at scanning some of the ewes were back on condition. 

We have taken the skinny 2-tooths, with a focus on the twinners and treating them a bit better.  We have added grain to their diet to boost them along.  Not always an easy  thing to get sheep initially interested to grain and as a result we have lost 2 sheep, out of 200.  And to keep numbers up in our terminals we have taken some MA singles down to the terminal mob.

Twin bearing 2-tooth ewes eating barley out of the feeder and hay off the ground following scanning.

So why were the 2-tooths up?  It wasn't to do with their condition, as on the whole they were probably lighter than last year as we had a higher number in lamb as hoggets last year.  We did put teaser rams out for the first time, as we had high dries last year.  So pleasing that we dropped that from 7% to 3%.

Whilst grass has grown, feed on the farm is still tight.  Currently in the process of getting rid of the last of our lambs, before sorting out all  of the cattle before hunkering down for the winter, which so far has been wet and mild.

Waiting for lambing ...

Since the end of May we have had a bit of sheep work.  That started by shearing the terminal ewes (B Flock) on the 30th May.  This was followed by scanning on 1st June (http://ultra-scan.co.nz/Default.aspx).  This flock is our old ewes and poorer type ewes that we mate to a suffolk ram.  All these lambs will be sold.  Our scanning for these ewes were up 10% but still not flash as it is still pretty much a development flock.

Sam Welch hard at work

The presser (from Canada) and the pile of wool

The terminals after being shorn

 Next was the Mixed Age Ewes (MA) which were shorn on 2nd and 3rd June and scanned on 5th June.  Pretty happy with the way the ewes scanned with overall 163%, with the older ewes doing 171%.  Our two-tooths were a bit disappointing but overall pleased.  The average condition score at scanning was 3.8 BCS.


MA Ewes just before clean/dirtying and bringing only the dirty ones home for crutching

2-tooths coming home for shearing

The scanning equipment

Raewyn hard at work (Alice is the photographer)

All our dry ewes were culled, with a small select few (22) two-tooths were kept.  From next year onwards this policy will cease and anything empty at scanning two-tooth and older will be culled.

Next was the shearing of hoggets 25th June and shearing 27th June.  Previously we had only ever mated a small portion of our hoggets, and this year all 475 went to the ram.  Although their weights were up this year, we still targeted 50% of the hoggets being in lamb.  Unfortunately we acheived 47% but 66% predicted lambing overall.

Bringing the hoggets home

All these hoggets are tagged with EID and will be monitored through Farm IQ.  We have tried to load the scanning, weight and BCS against the hoggets, but unfortunately we haven't been quite able to get our Prattley/Tru Test set up to work properly and still awaiting support from the techno people to sort this out.

The equipment arrives!

Using the Prattley 3-way drafter and Tru-test equipment

In the last 10 days we have been working to vaccinate all the ewes and set stock.  After shearing we hoped to lice treat all the ewes but this has been severley hindered by the wet weather.  With more recent stable weather we were able to catch up on this, plus 5 in 1 (clostridial disease) and Cydectin LA.  Last year we had great success from good ewe condition, reduced dags and good weaning weights that we have decided, at least in the interim that we can't afford to not do this.

2-tooths waiting to be vaccinated and drafted

All our flock has been split into singles and multiples and set stock accordingly. Lambing is due to start 1st August.  To date we had one lamb - single via a four-tooth came in with the mob on 9th July, and late 19th July another single was born.  Ewes are in good condition and all have good covers underfoot.

Our first lamb!