Make the most of surplus lambs
Attention to detail and a polished lamb rearing system has helped Kevin and Jacquie Daniel streamline their time when dealing with surplus lambs.
Make your forage count
The couple farm 120ha in Trebursye, near Launceston, with most of the land down to permanent pasture. They run a flock of 1000 North Country Mules, which are put to a Texel ram. Around half the ewes lamb indoors from early March while late ewes lamb outdoors.
Scanning
As they scan near 210% before lambing, a high number of ewes will be carrying triplets. They always take one of the three lambs away, usually the weakest, they can have anywhere up to 190 lambs that need rearing support.
Milk replacers and feeds
At the start, early lambs are bottle fed but once they get into double figures of surplus lambs, they move onto a Volac automated feeder with Lamlac Freeflow. All surplus lambs start off in a nursary pen. When they are feeding confidently, they move on to the next pen where they are offered Harpers Lamb Start 2 Finish Pellets, barley straw and fresh water. Designed to be fed ad-lib from one week old, Lamb Start 2 Finish Pellets are very palatable and contain Sel-Plex to promote early lamb vigour.
Haylage is introduced around two months before turning out to help acclimatise the lambs’ rumens to grass and roughage, and lambs are fully wearned at 17kg. They run with the rest of the flock and are seperated into the weight bands when they go out. There is little difference in the health of the hand reared lambs.
More Information
Talk to your Feed Specialist about making the most of your surplus lambs or call the office on 01409 254 300. For all your Lambing Essential porducts, visit Harpers Farm Supplies
