The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: Azzdodd on February 09, 2014, 09:19:04 pm
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Girls were done today 6 ewes.....15 lambs 3 triplets 3 twins! Plans for the triplets already....don't have the time for bottle feeding.....sell them? This is the first time I will have lambed these ewes contacted previous owner he says a few have raised trips before.....what does everyone do with there triplets?
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What breed are your ewes?
If you dont need one to adopt on id probably sell them as some people will pay silly money for them, failing that give them away.
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I have plenty of trips every year---they get treated the same as everyone else & left in the field to lamb/fend for themselves
Most rear twins , a few singles and a few trips
If I pick up a straggler I may feed it for 24 hrs and then sell it on ----otherwise the foxes & crows take care of them
If you haven't time to bottle rear them just accept that there will most likely be a dead lamb or two
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Crossbreed cheviot X and charlois X i know prices were silly last year.....colostrum and sell? I have had ewes raise triplets before not one single too adopt on which is not grest
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Excuse my complete ignorance....
... But what's the problem with triplets?
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Ewes only have 2 teats.....unless there really milky ewes don't have enough milk
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We would generally lift one, then either twin it on to something with lots of milk and a single, or set it on to something that loses its lamb, in the mean time it would be on the shepherdess bucket.
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If you haven't time to bottle rear them just accept that there will most likely be a dead lamb or two
Sorry but I find that a bit negligent. I may be a smallholder but my parents were full time sheep farmers, and many generations before them, and they would ALWAYS try their best for each and every one.
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If you haven't time to bottle rear them just accept that there will most likely be a dead lamb or two
Sorry but I find that a bit negligent. I may be a smallholder but my parents were full time sheep farmers, and many generations before them, and they would ALWAYS try their best for each and every one.
It's a business decision influenced by many factors ---the largest one in my case is not having facilities to foster or bottle rear lambs
The second largest factor is making a profit without the safety net of farmers dole (aka SFP)
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Surely a better business decision would be to get £10-£20 a piece for the extras rather than letting them die. People are queuing up to take them around here and a fair few will pay a lot more than that at anything from 1-3 days old. Stick some on Preloved and you will be amazed how popular they are. Failing that just twin them up, wastage is a loss.
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Have to agree , last year we had people doing a 4hr return Journey to collect Cades . The phone did not stop ringing
Some of them advertised online at the moment are charging £35 + each :o
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It's a business decision influenced by many factors ---the largest one in my case is not having facilities to foster or bottle rear lambs
The second largest factor is making a profit without the safety net of farmers dole (aka SFP)
facilities to bottle feed? all you need is a bottle and a bag of milk powder?
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All situations are different and mine is no exception
To raise a bottle lamb you have to first find it before the crows do, if you live on farm this may be simple but as a grazier with the nearest land 6 miles away that is not so easy (lambing 900 ewes on 6 sites)
Most of the time when I arrive to check around ewes the triplet bearers have 2 or 3 lambs at foot--if they have 2 the 3rd is almost always missing or there are just a few remains from scavengers. If they have 3 at foot then they usually rear them. In fact this year I used 3 ram lambs on my flock that came from triplets where all 3 were raised to weaning by the mother
I quite agree that a saved orphan lamb is a good sale and I do plenty of this but there are still some that escape the net and die in the field---that's part of the life/death struggle that is part of farming
In spite of my negligent ways I still manage to rear 165%+ on ewes and 85%+ on ewe lambs every year. This is way above the average for UK farmers (I also don't collect the afore mentioned farmers dole so make a real profit) ;)
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When you are lambing on a farm scale, the amount of work to look after orphaned lambs is significant. And you can find yourself all too frequently deciding on whether to spend time saving this lamb, or getting out and checking the ewes again - where a lamb or even a ewe could be being lost because you are not there to help.
It's different when you have only a handful, of course it seems easier to manage it all then. On the moorland farm we lambed the 80-odd mules first, and with two of us, it hardly seemed to impinge on ordinary life. Then the 400+ Swaleys kicked in and it was flat out madness for 17 days.
To sell them on, a conscientious farmer will make sure all lambs have had adequate colostrum in the first few hours, have fed well for at least 24 hours and seem well-established. That's the very bit of work takes all the time and effort!
So whilst I can't just leave 'em to fade away but have to try to save 'em, I can completely understand others making different decisions. And it doesn't mean they are heartless, just that they don't have the manpower to produce 'spare' lambs to sell on, and aren't willing to sell them on, badly or not prepared, to unsuspecting punters.
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If you bottle feed the lambs first thing in the morning, when you get home at night and just before bedtime it will help. There are also multi-suckle buckets available (look at Fearings website) as well as the Shepherdess heated drinker system (although an expensive option for a few lambs).
On the subject of "farmer's dole" this keeps the price of food down as many farmers would go under without it. I don't know a single farmer who likes it to be this way - we would much rather be paid the true cost of production plus a meaningful profit but people have become used to cheap food and we are where we are. Where we also are is having to meet a very strict set of rules with regard to keeping the land in good agricultural and environmental condition, safeguarding water quality, not cultivating field margins and so on. If some of these rules weren't in place we could exploit every inch of ground and make more money that way.
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Just to make myself really popular (!): SFPs may or may not help keep the price of food down but an unwanted side effect is that it does price young farmers who weren't around when entitlements were handed out - out of the industry. Older/SFP farmers can afford to pay more to rent or buy land as they don't have to make a farming profit out of it. If you have to compete without this support then margins are even tighter. I understand the argument for support and as hypocritical as it is if only I could have afforded to buy entitlements off my Range Rover driving SFP farmer friends I would have. Allowing the "entitlements" to be owned and traded and not linking them to productive/active farming was a real own goal for the long term farming industry IMO and has not helped foster efficiency and has discouraged new entrants. - I await the backlash!!! :innocent:
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I agree that naked acres is a foolish idea. The whole thing started with a Government drive to increase home-based food production and, as always seeems to be the way with rules made by people who have no idea about the subject, has had important and unwanted side effects they'd never thought of. I find the idea of my neighbours who've bought smallholdings and small farms because their children begged for a pony and who are now getting SFP for their weed-ridden, poached mudbaths with a couple of neglected ponies on it to be quite appalling (the ponies, of course, having long since lost their novelty value).
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Whilst SFP is meant to subsidise food production and in some cases is what keeps a farm afloat it also has many bad side effects;
Artificially inflates land and rent prices
Discourages innovative farming
Makes the wealthy even richer
etc
Look at my neighbour with 1200 acres and the associated SFP who sends 3 kids to a fee paying school---is that right? If he has the cash to spend on expensive education then does he need his farm supporting by us?
Look at the hill farmer who struggles to make a wage with sheep/cattle on his poor hill land and only just gets by because he gets SFP---does that SFP really represent good value for the taxpayer?
The argument for SFP is based on two disputed 'facts'
1) Without it food costs would increase---rubbish, if farmers can't produce food cheap enough we will import it---that's what happens with lamb now. It comes from NZ where it is produced a bit cheaper
2) Without it farmers would go bust---correct but so what? If you run an inefficient business you go bust ---that is what they call a free market/capitalism. There is always someone who can do the job better than you waiting to grab the opportunity
It is also argued that SFP ensures that farmers keep to strict rules that stop them polluting or degrading the environment---but these laws will be in place regardless of any subsidy
Looking back at this it's a bit of a rant---so apologies! But I think we need to rethink the whole ag subsidy idea because we can't afford to subsidise inefficiencies any longer