Farmer Focus: Indoor lambs tagged and out in 24 hours

The end is now in sight with the indoor lambing flock, and the majority have lambed in the first two weeks, which is great. These ewes go to terminal sire tups and all progeny will go through the butchery.

The dry and fairly warm weather has made things far easier for us this year. Once they lambed and had 24 hours in a mothering-up pen, ewes and lambs went straight into the field.

This cut the workload down significantly, as normally we put them in a run-on pen for a couple of days before turning out.

Mothering-up pens are mucked out and limed after every ewe and this has helped reduce watery mouth.

See also: Why and when farmers should weigh sheep

About the author

Louise Elkington

Louise Elkington runs 500 breeding ewes and a small suckler herd in Lincolnshire with husband Chris. Gelston Lamb sells all meat produced on the farm through pop-up shops, deliveries and catering. They have 54ha (133 acres) of grass on a farm business tenancy and agreements for stubble turnips and hay aftermaths.

Read more articles by Louise Elkington

Ewes are given a magnesium bolus just before they are turned out; we learned the hard way a few years ago when we lost quite a few to staggers. It’s an extra cost, but well worth it.

Lambs are all tagged at birth and linked to the ewe.

This year, we will be culling harder in this flock. Weights will be recorded and monitored regularly (as we do with the A-flock, which lambs outside in April), and anything with smaller, poor-performing lambs will go. 

April-lambing ewes will be coming back to the farm next week. They have been on stubble turnips on heathland at local arable farms, which has worked well. 

Ewes carrying singles were taken off turnips about a month ago and have been on grass; hopefully, we won’t have singles that are too big, as that is far from ideal when lambing outside.

We spray-number our ewes before putting them into lambing paddocks, to help us to record and manage when tagging lambs at birth.

We find tagging at birth means you can generate more data to improve flock genetics. It also saves a job of tagging later in the year.

The new pop-up shop is working well and hasn’t taken trade away from people coming to the farm. Along with our home-bred lamb and mutton, we source local beef and free-range pork.

The beef is getting so expensive, it will soon be catching up with lamb prices – I hope this won’t put customers off buying local produce.