Sheep records

Diary

Posted: Monday 27 October, 2014

by Rosemary Champion at 4:42pm in Sheep 1 comment Comments closed

Since we only have a small number of ewes, it's not financially viable to buy a commercial system for recording data about our sheep but I do like to have a record of some performance data - I couldn't possibly remember everything, or even anything some days.

So since 2009, our first lambing season, I've recorded how many lambs have been born to each ewe, date of lambing, sire, tag numbers. I now also record birth weights and sometimes 30 day weights but I confess to being less rigorous about this than I might be. We don't have a weigh crate so they have to be weighed using the spring balance and by 30 days old, they are pretty heavy to lift :-)

I also record if there are any lambing problems or issues with the lambs such as entropion. Every year, I think I've added another piece of data. I do love a spreadsheet (although, in truth, a database might actually be better but I can work Excel, after a fashion).

Anyway, in addition to the individual sheet for each ewe, I do a summary sheet. A few nights ago, I was messing with 2014 and setting up 2015, and I started to look at our female lines. We have bought seven ewes since 2007; three in 2007, two in 2009 and two in 2010. We have sold two of those seven and culled one and retired two.

We have fifteen ewes to the tup this year plus eight ewe lambs; of the 23, 10 are from one ewe, Juno, either daughters or grand-daughters. Another six are from Lucy's line while the other seven are from the other five "foundation ewes". Juno has had six sets of twins in six lambings (she's now retired), so I've kept her daughters; her daughters have consistently had twins (and our only set of triplets, which she raised without any apparent difficulty).

I found this quite interesting - and I got to colour co-ordinate the different ewe lines, which made me happy. I am but a simple soul :-)