Lambing
Lambing time is an extremely busy time in the sheep calendar. It lets producers see the results of a year worth of management, in the ewe’s ability to produce vigorous healthy lambs and produce good levels of milk for her young. It is a time for absolute attention to detail, we have produced a series of information sheets to aid at this time of year.
For more information on lambing topics see our sheep updates section, where you will find timely articles relating to pre and post lambing.
Sheep Worrying Advice for Lambing Time
Worrying of sheep has serious implications to animal welfare, the farmers finances, but also results in added emotional stress of farmers who find dead or injured stock during what is an already stressful period in the farming calendar.
Click here for more advice on how to address sheep worrying >>
Using Clips for Castration and Tails
New methods are available for tailing and castrating lambs including the use of clips, in this video the various steps are shown when applying clips including the size of clip to select, restraining the lamb and applying the clip. The clip causes minimal pain to the lamb compared to other methods, increasing the welfare, time for ewe/lamb bonding and intake of colostrum and milk.
Indoor Lambing Management
As lambing time approaches, we tackle key challenges in this timely video, where we address colostrum, hygiene, iodine supply and reducing antibiotics at lambing time.
Reducing Labour At Lambing Time
The lambing period can be extremely labour intensive. In this video we provide some simple, low cost tips to ‘tweak’ the system to reduce labour and now is the time to review your lambing accommodation to see what changes can be made for a more efficient lambing. Reducing labour time spent on the simple things such as filling water buckets will allow more time to be spent on the more important tasks. View here >>
New Entrants Guide to Post-Lambing Procedures
In this new entrant's guide, we look at post-lambing procedures and what you can do to support your lambs but also get them registered. View here >>
Colostrum
Colostrum For Lambs
Colostrum is the ultimate super food for new born lambs, watch this short video, where Kirsten Williams gives some tips on storing, freezing and defrosting colostrum for this lambing.
Lamb & Ewe Health
Live Lambs
“Live Lambs” was a 3 year project delivered by SAC Consulting aimed at understanding and overcoming the challenges of lamb mortality on Scottish Farms, with an overall aim of reducing lamb losses using 5 key focus areas:
- Body Condition Score
- Nutrition
- Lambing Management
- Abortion
- Identifying Causes of Lamb Losses
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