All is quiet on the sheep front these days. Lambing is long behind us, with the exception of a surprise arrival last week, and plenty of sun on the lambs’ backs has helped stave off many health problems.

We have gathered the sheep and lambs in the yard twice since lambing. The first time was to give lambs a white drench for nematodirus and their first Heptavac-P shot to cover clostridia and pasteurellosis diseases.

They were approximately 40 days old at that stage so we recorded their weights too. The average was 18kg and we are happy with that. The average birth weight was 4.9kg so they have gained over 300g/day since then.

The second visit to the yard was six weeks later to get their second Heptavac-P shot. They were run through the footbath on both visits and we have seen few cases of scald.

Apart from putting up more fencing there has been little work with the sheep other than moving them from grazed field to grazing field. All going well, the reduced labour with them this year will mean our hourly rate will be close to minimum wage, which will be a big improvement on what we paid ourselves in previous years.

Surprise arrival

Another low-input result was last week’s surprise arrival. One of the aged hill ewes was scanned empty back in December, but time restrictions meant I did not get a chance to bring her to the mart as a cull. Instead, she moved into a field beside the shed to keep the ram company as neither she nor the ram needed the rising plane of nutrition that pregnant ewes were being fed.

I did wonder at the time if nature would take its course between them but assumed it had not when the ewe did not lamb back in May.

Imagine the pleasant surprise then when two little lambs and a ewe with a fine bag of milk greeted me last Saturday morning. She had no rising plane of nutrition other than plenty of grass, but the lambs were still a respectable 4kg and 4.2kg.

For their older comrades, who were all born in March, the final few jobs are on the horizon now. It is only a fairly short few months the lambs are around when you think about it.

Sale plan

We might take a few faecal egg count (FEC) samples in the coming weeks to check the worm burden. They will be dosed if required, then weaned and weighed at around 100 days.

Replacements will be picked out and a sale plan will be drawn up for the rest. Anything above 42kg or those who will reach it in the following weeks will go directly to the factory. When the price drops to €5.05-5.10/kg, the remainder will be sold as stores.

Our rule of thumb is €5/kg in the factory equates to a store lamb price of €50 with the weight. So, a 35kg lamb will make around €85 at the mart, give or take a euro either way.

For us, it is better to take this €85 then, rather than feeding and looking after a few stragglers for another six or seven weeks until they reach factory weight, when they might make no more than €95 as the price continues on its traditional autumn drop.

Considering these small numbers and margins being as thin as the gable-end of a five euro note, it is just as well we have some quiet times for contemplation like this during the year. Let no one say we are busy amadáns all year around.