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My father used to swear that bad news, breakdowns or general problems came along three at a time. Therefore, if a piece of machinery broke down in the middle of a field, he would ponder aloud what other two catastrophes were about to occur.
This didn’t exactly help team morale, and yet I may have inherited this slightly pessimistic attitude.
Within days of a mediocre silage analysis result, we had a disappointing outcome from sheep scanning, and I now find myself wondering what the third kick in the teeth will be. I’ll hold off weighing cattle for a few weeks, otherwise they won’t have gained any weight.
We scanned about 230 mature ewes and they have averaged 177%. It’s far from a disaster, and yet after previous years, when percentages ranged from 185 to 195, this backward step is annoying.
I spoke to a couple of neighbouring farmers who thought they were also back a bit, and their scientific rationale was a shrug of the shoulders, followed by “One of those years, wasn’t it”.
I tend to agree with them.
Within days of a mediocre silage analysis result, we had a disappointing outcome from sheep scanning, and I now find myself wondering what the third kick in the teeth will be
Problems
A broad overview of the statistics immediately throws up a couple of obvious problems. There are 10 empty ewes (although some of these could simply be very far back), and too many singles.
I would normally expect around five empties, some of which can be traced back to specific incidences at the previous lambing. However, none of these sheep have any known history of lambing difficulties, prolapse, or any other obstetrical nightmares. Most of them are big, fit ewes, the picture of health and vitality.
They are mostly Mules, with youth firmly on their side, although a couple are elderly as well. A few were bought-in as hoggets in 2019, so the £165 (€194) paid per head doesn’t look like the wisest investment in the world.
Farmer Writes: Scanning result hits morale.
A lot of these sheep would have been served during the first days of October, so perhaps all that wet weather in the autumn had a negative effect on the fertility of breeding ewes.
Does this adequately account for the increase in the number of singles? There are still plenty of ewes carrying triplets, so they mustn’t have been too stressed by the rain.
I should point out that, in general, sheep were in exactly the same body condition as other years. Breeds and age profiles were similar also, and day-to-day management didn’t vary either. The only difference was the introduction of a foot rot vaccine, which presumably has no negative connotations.
Avoid
What I need now is to avoid anyone with a magnificent scanning result.
This will only depress me and force me into confronting the unpalatable truth: there may be a problem within my breeding flock that needs investigation.
Much more preferable will be conversations with anyone whose flock has scanned about a lamb and a half. This will allow me to reflect on how skilled a shepherd I am, while marvelling at the prolificacy of my great flock of sheep. Maybe there’s no such thing as a good or a bad farmer - perhaps it just depends who you compare yourself with.
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