CPT Lambing takes off

Our CPT flocks are extremely busy this week, with lambing in full flow. There have been no issues so far with the favourable weather conditions being a major bonus in keeping lambing pens free and disease issues to a minimum. All the data is being captured on electronic handhelds which upload the data to the Sheep Ireland database a number of times daily. We have not yet passed the half way mark in terms of ewes lambed. Looking at the data we have captured so far we are running at an overall mortality rate of 4.8% – these are dead lambs at lambing, it is not mortality from pregnancy scanning which we will calculated once lambing has been completed. This figure is likely to change as more data is submitted in the coming days.

In terms of lambing difficulty we are running at a figure of 20% across all of the flocks. We define lambing difficulty as the number of lambing’s scored as 3 (Slight Assistance) or 4 (Severe Assistance) – in simple terms, whenever a ewe would not lamb without farmer assistance. See below for some images from this year’s CPT lambing.

Reminder to collect lamb weights

This week we have circulated another reminder text to all our LambPlus breeders to record their 40 day lamb weights. Some December lambing breeders are now collecting their third weight (weaning weight). Other breeders are now just in the middle of lambing and are busy recording birth data.

New Sheep Ireland data recording screens

For the past two weeks we have been contacting our LambPlus breeders by phone to ensure that they are not encountering any issues with using our new webscreens. As with anything new, it will take time for breeders to get familiarised with the new system. Where breeders encounter any issues whatsoever, we encourage them to contact us directly here in the office straight away on 1850 601 901.

Embryo Transfer lambs

The number of pedigree lambs being born as ETs seems to be growing annually. Our new webscreens will facilitate the recording of these lambs easily once the correct procedure is followed. In order to record the birth of an ET lamb, it is important that the surrogate/recipient ewe is added to the flock for each ET birth. These recipient ewes are usually just commercial ewes owned by each breeder and all should have an official NSIS tag. These ewes can be added to a flock on the Sheep Ireland system very easily, but please contact the Sheep Ireland office to help you to do this.