Don’t feel sheepish: How to get the best out of your flock – Turriff

Get the best out of your flock

As lambing time approaches ensuring the correct nutrition of the pregnant ewe is vital and in the light of ever-increasing feed costs, making the best use of home-produced forages becomes increasingly important.  Understanding your silage analysis means the correct levels of supplementation can be fed, optimising both lambing performance and profit margins.  Nutrition also plays a key role in the management of young ewes- what are the considerations to ensure longevity and keep replacement costs to a minimum.

A key component in the nutrition jigsaw is the ability to maximise the performance of grassland.  What are the best timings for fertiliser applications, grazing, the benefits of sward monitoring and management options?

Guest speakers

• Kirsten Williams, Senior Specialist, SAC Consulting
• Poppy Frater, Sheep Specialist, SAC Consulting

Topics for discussion

The main nutritional issues pre lambing including:

• Available feeds and relative values
• How different silage dry matters and nutritional quality can affect the amount of concentrate required.
• A “hands on” exercise to evaluate the best value feeds.
• Feeding the young ewe for longevity
• Getting the best from grassland – when to apply N, when to graze, measuring grass and an introduction to rotational grassland.

Improving your flock management can not only improve farm profitability, but can help with the farm carbon footprint.  Little improvements across all areas of the farm can lead to bigger overall savings.  To find out other ways to improve your farm’s performance see how some of the Farming For a Better Climate‘s Climate Change Focus Farmers have made improvements to their enterprises.