The best-laid plans of of farmers and mice are often the ones which go awry

I normally do all the spring barley as malting, but last year, I had a poor crop of malting barley that missed out on the bonuses, so I decided to feed barley this year.

In 2022, all the malting barley made the bonus, so it was very disappointing in 2023. The barley is looking good despite going in late and the poor growth rates for a while. I will not have an issue with straw this year. If I can get the barley out reasonably early this year, I will go in with forage rape and winter crops.

I have 23 suckler cows with 26 calves, two sets of twins and one cow went to the factory because she was repeatedly prolapsing. Cows and calves are doing well this year. I have first-cut silage harvested but second-cut is not doing so well, a bit stagnant due to low growth rates.

I am faecal egg sampling the lambs every two weeks at the moment, and I have just done a test, and the lambs are clear, so there is no need to dose them. I am also doing the ewes this year, which I would not normally do.

We had a lot of Haemonchus contortus (Barber's Pole Worm) or blood-sucking worms in 2023, and I want to make sure I don’t have it again this year. It’s identified by a high worm count, so luckily, it was low in the last test at 100 eggs per gram, so no issue.

Lambs were weighed at weaning on June 26, and they weighed 27.3kg on average. There were 5% of lambs ready to be drafted at that stage, but I had to wait for the withdrawal period for CLIK. 

So I have no lambs drafted at this stage but will have a significant draft of 10% ready to go once the withdrawal expires. I am feeding the heavier lambs, approximately 500g a day.

We are working on improving the sheep-handling facilities on the farm. With so much going on, it will just make things easier. We are concentrating on batch footbath facilities to control lameness.