The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: YoungRasher on January 24, 2014, 07:47:25 pm
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I had my 12 mule thieves scanned today and 11 of them are having twins and only 1 scanned for a single.
I Just hope they all arrive now I know what they are expecting.
we scanned them while we did my bosses, he has 90 mules and they are scanned with 178 lambs.
for the past 4 years he's been very accurate. they all produce what he scanned them as except the ones that must of hidden.
Last year was a very good year and we got over 200% to market. there were some 4's in that which were only scanned for 2 so that bumped it up quite a lot and If i remember right 10 had 3's that were scanned for 2. only one ewe failed to lamb and we had very few losses.
Thats why I bought mules and for the easy lambing, (oh dear I've said it now)
I also kept 20 of last years lambs which will go to my tup in november.
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We had ours scanned today - one barren (no surprise), three singles, eight twins and one triplet. Never had triplets before :)
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What breed do you have?
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Coloured Ryelands
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I take it your happy with those results then.
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Yep. If I get 21 lambs to weaning, I'll be well pleased.
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I take it your happy with those results then.
You sound like I shouldn't be ???
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Welldone YoungRasher thats a really good %! :excited:
I havn't scanned my 12 and will just have to wait and see! I am buying 3 more in in two weeks time and they are scanned so thats ok :) so will have 15 ewes lambing this spring, cant wait to see how many lambs I will be getting :)
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Sorry. i didn't mean it to come across that way. typing when tired doesn't help.
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Not such good news for us- I thought our ram looked past it and that proved to be the case- 8 empty and only 1 with twins. Still, at least the 2 we do have will be pampered!!
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We had ours scanned today - one barren (no surprise), three singles, eight twins and one triplet. Never had triplets before :)
Watch out for the triplet-bearer. Our Southdown carrying 3 lambed 6 days early last year.
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We had ours scanned today - one barren (no surprise), three singles, eight twins and one triplet. Never had triplets before :)
Watch out for the triplet-bearer. Our Southdown carrying 3 lambed 6 days early last year.
Thanks for the tip - not really what I wanted :thinking: My first single is due seven days after the triplets, so that could be two weeks. Not going to make twinning on very easy, is it?
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You just never know, Rosemary... ;) Sometimes they scan for 3 but only produce 2, sometimes the triples hang on and lamb late... and you may manage to twin on anyway, the triplets (or at least one of them) are likely to be small compared to the singles, so by the time the single lambs the smallest triplet could still be the same size as the newborn.
If the foster lamb is a few days old, you'll need to employ all the 'tricks' to get mum to accept it - and IME you need to be present as the adoptive mother lambs and intervene immediately in order to get it to work. Easier with an inexperienced mum - but then not always best to ask a first-timer to rear twins. :thinking:
As always, interesting times ahead ! :D
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We've just had one lot of earlies and my ewe lambs scanned so far. Thankfully my ewe lambs are all empty :relief:, but not so helpfully, the shearling that is meant to be tupped that was running with them is also empty. :( Which now has me worried that Cap'n could've been firing blanks - which would mean all my fleece sheep bar Pug (the Icelandic) being empty :o. So I'll have all fingers and toes crossed until we get the rest of my girls scanned! (BH says I shouldn't worry - Sophie was a bit poorly during tupping, so that's the most likely explanation for her being barren. He's keeping her on to try again next year - we'll have to watch she doesn't get too pudgy, she's part Suffolk and a 'good do-er' ;) )
And the other surprise empty sheep was everyone's favourite mule, Cheeky. It would have been her 4th crop - I brought her and three others with me from the moorland farm - so I decided I better be 'sensible' and let her go. :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( Gosh, I shall miss her! :'(
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, he has 90 mules and they are scanned with 178 lambs.
for the past 4 years he's been very accurate. they all produce what he scanned them as except the ones that must of hidden.
Last year was a very good year and we got over 200% to market. there were some 4's in that which were only scanned for 2 so that bumped it up quite a lot and If i remember right 10 had 3's that were scanned for 2..
Sorry but from the above information your scanner is 87% or less accurate when he should be in the late nineties, triplets and quads should not be a problem , I normally have 0.5% inaccurate scans . Good scan % :thumbsup:
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I see what your saying and the only thing I know is they were scanned late last year so he commented on how big they were. This year he came earlier and could see a lot clearer. I looked on the scanner last year and could clearly see the bones of each lamb, this year I could hardly tell what I was looking at but he said it made it much clearer. so I can only presume that the extra lambs last year were hiding behind the others.
Does that make sense?
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Makes total sense :thumbsup: have to see what happens this year ?
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14 more days to go and then we should see how accurate he was.
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update. all the 1 and 3 were right but were getting a hell of a lot of triplets from the ones that scanned for 2. more than we can handle really. any that had 1 have had an extra adopted on. were only halfway through 106 ewes and its starting to look like a problem.
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so far maybe 300 lambed and only 1wrong scanned 2 had 3 and to be fair the third lamb was half the size , so I think next year you need a new scanner :farmer:
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The scanner we use is the only one we know local enough to do ours. The problem isn't really the miss scanning. (at this minute anyway) its what to do with so many triplets. we only had a handful scanned for singles and as soon as one of those lambs it gets another adopted on when we can. up to now we must of had 15 triplets that weren't scanned for 3 as well as 5 that were and there is still more than 50 ewes to lamb. we separated the singles 6 week ago for feeding reasons and left the ones scanned for 2 and 3 together and fed them according to condition scores.
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Invest in a Shepherdess feeder?
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A friend of mine just has. He's ended up with 18 cades. Its costing him a fortune.
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Yep, cades aren't a cheap business. But what else to do? Losing ewes who fail to feed three, or losing lambs who don't drink enough, or having lambs who fail to thrive and who need keeping, and feeding, for longer to make weight, isn't a good business either.
The 'farm over the hill' where I acquired an extra cade (we call them 'pet' lambs up here) lambs thousands and expects to have in the region of 100 pet lambs by the end. They have pens of ages, each with their own Shepherdess, and just regard it as part of the job.
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The other thing you can do is sell your cades to people who rear lambs, and to other local farmers who lamb later than you and need spare lambs for bereaved ewes when they start.
As to scanning for triplets, the two very good scanners I've worked with both say that they'll stand by the geld, single and twin scans but that it's harder to get all the triplets, especially if scanning at a reasonable pace. It's also especially hard if the timing isn't exactly right - too soon or too late makes it harder to identify the individual lambs. So with a big flock, tupped on a tight time frame, the scanner will tell you when they're coming and is likely to get most of the triplets (and all the geld, single and twins correct.) But on a smaller flock, when the scanner is fitting you in around other larger clients, and especially if tupping hasn't been tight, then it is all much more difficult to get the accuracy and to pick out all the triplets.
However, all that said, you have a reasonable size flock by the sound of it, and you also said that your scanner was pleased with what s/he could see, so the timing presumeably was optimal. In which case, I'd discuss it with your scanner and if not satisfied (for instance, s/he may say that s/he needs more time to get all the triplets, so would charge 60p/sheep rather than 55p, or whatever, and you may be happy with that) - but if not happy, then change your scanner.
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knowing if the extra were triplets wouldn't really change anything the way we do things. it just seems like more than any other year we've had loads of triplets. at the minute we are managing with adopting onto the singles and have a few on the bottle.
From the date you put your tups in how long before you would normally scan? we have mules. (BFL and Swaledale) if that makes any difference.
Thanks.
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I generally put my tups in on 5th Nov and the scanner wants to do them mid Jan.
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I think it varies according to the equipment the scanner uses.
On the moorland farm (with an incredibly accurate and incredibly fast scanner), we tupped from 6th Nov and she scanned on 6th Feb. When we split the flock and tupped the mules from end Oct, the Swales from 17th Nov, she split her scan accordingly - end Jan the mules, 17th Feb the Swales.
Our scanner here, with more up-to-date equipment (I guess, since he's bought it more recently) is happy to come earlier. Later and he can only tell us geld/not geld; it gets harder to distinguish numbers.