‘Don’t waste the space’ with ewe lambs

01-04-2010 | Marie Taylor

An easy way for sheep farmers to make more money and reduce costs is to mate more ewes to terminal sires.

This was one of Peter Fennessy's messages when he spoke recently to the Vet Services Hawke's Bay seminar Less Sheep More Dollars.

The Dunedin-based managing director of AbacusBio said many farmers mated too many ewes for breeding replacements.

"Ewe lambs retained because they might be wanted as replacements later are a waste of space. Their dams are better mated to terminals."

He said the progeny of a terminal sire was worth about one to 2kg more in carcaseweight at the same age, delivering another $6-$8 a head in gross returns. In addition, lambs by terminal sires often had better survival at birth due to hybrid vigour, so the end result was more lambs.

"The reality is that they provide so much flexibility that much of the extra value is probably picked up as profit."

Reducing replacement numbers also reduced the cost of those replacement hoggets. Older ewes could be mated earlier, and sold early when their lambs were weaned, giving time to put more weight on the remaining ewes.

Dr Fennessy recommended culling around 15% of ewe lambs produced for replacements, rather than the 50% many farmers culled to get their replacements. From a flock of 3000 ewes, most people would want 800 replacements a year.

At 140% lambing, that would mean mating only 1350 ewes to get 1890 lambs, half of these - 945 - would be females. Culling out 15%, or 142, would leave 803 for flock replacements.

That way, the remainder of the 1650 ewes could be mated to terminal sires.

"You need less than half your ewe flock to produce ewe replacements. A lot of farmers are mating two-thirds to three-quarters and culling them down." Another way to cut costs was to keep the ewes for another year.

These were good examples of cutting the effective cost of a ewe and increasing productivity.

"The ewe is effectively a dead cost. The more kilogram of lambs you can get per ewe the more profitable it is. Production per ewe is incredibly important as part of return on investment."

He said considerable potential existed in sheep farming to keep increasing productivity. NZ data showed productivity of ewes measured in kilograms of meat produced had gone up steadily for 16 consecutive years. Ewes now produced about two-thirds more meat a ewe than they did 20 years ago.

"For example there was a 29% increase in lambing rate per ewe in the 16 years to 2004-5, a 29% increase in lamb carcaseweight, a 27% increase in ewe carcaseweight and a 68% increase in overall ewe productivity measured in meat produced/ewe."

Part of the reason was that meat processors had been prepared to take heavier lambs.

"There are two ways of increasing productivity per sheep: either increase lamb weights or produce more lambs. This is incredibly important."

These measured productivity gains came from improvements in genetics and in management. Looking at the increases in lambing percentages, about half this gain was genetic and half management.

In comparison, of the 10kg increase in ewe liveweight over the 16 years, about one-third of the gain was genetic and two-thirds management.

Farmers shouldn't worry about things they couldn't control such as the weather, input costs, market prices or, in future, things such as the requirements for individual electronic identification or the Emissions Trading Scheme.

Instead, they should start thinking about ways to use information to make better management decisions, use inputs more effectively, work with processors more effectively, and make money from individual electronic ID and the ETS.

For example, soil mats recording temperature and soil moisture could be used to predict impacts on feed supply which could be used to help make earlier decisions about buying or selling stock.

Breeding from ewe hoggets, keeping ewes an extra year and mating more ewes to terminal sires were ways to use inputs more effectively.

Sheep farmers also faced challenges to reduce futile labour; buying rams with barer points would reduce yarding and crutching.

Dr Fennessy was enthusiastic about David Scobie's work to produce low-input sheep, but he said breeding did take time. He also encouraged farmers to work more effectively with their processors to supply more lambs when they needed them, and produce more lambs to meet muscling requirements to increase returns above basic weights. Many processors were offering various schemes to encourage a closer working relationship.

During the next few years he could also see a place for the newly imported sheep breed Ile de France, which could extend lambing seasons.

Farmers had to work out cunning ways to turn the cost of electronic ID into a profit; a good example was using eID with weighing to pick up animals that didn't gain weight even when fed well. Other ideas were tracking lamb performance by source and sorting ewes for mating and lambing.

He said tag costs would come down: "When sheep tags get under $1 we can see a serious value proposition."

The same principle should be used to deal with the ETS, to turn a potential cost into a profit by planting trees and selling carbon credits in a planned way with harvesting spread over years.

"The big thing we are now facing is a market with many more demands on us. That's the most important thing from a farmer point of view."

Customers were wanting more information about the products they were eating, so welfare of animals, carbon footprint, water use and food-safety issues were more important, Dr Fennessy said.

"Having a clear conscience about buying a product is a big issue in high-value products now.

"That means we are going to need better information systems to provide information with our products."

He also advocated one of the best ways for this to happen was committed supply contracts working for both the farmer and processor.

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