Preparing ewes for triplets now the aim

Feeding vital: AgResearch scientist Tom Fraser says the 19kg pile of grass in front of him is how much a ewe with twin or triplet lambs has to eat per day to maintain its body condition score

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Forty years ago a major topic of discussion among sheep farmers in New Zealand was would they be able to manage ewes with twins.

Fast forward to today and a similar debate is occurring over how farmers should be managing triplets, AgResearch scientist Tom Fraser says.

"I think we do have to come to grips with it and I'm not sure what the answer is," Mr Fraser told farmers at a Beef+Lamb field day held near Mt Somers.

If farmers were to take advantage of the high prices they were being paid for their lambs, they had to identify and improve their lamb growth rates during ewe lactation.

It was not difficult to work out and it was a figure farmers need to know.

"The average lamb growth rate during lactation in New Zealand is 220 grams a day."

If that figure were the average, it meant there were a lot of farmers whose lambs sat below that figure, he said.

If farmers managed to improve that rate to 300 grams a day, it would provide an additional $27,000 for a farmer with 2000 lambs.

"The dollars that can be made from getting these systems right are very high."

High lamb growth rate targets could best be achieved during lactation and post weaning.

The period of lactation is the easiest time by far to achieve maximum lamb growth rates.

"Once you get into mid-December and the post-weaning phase it is much more difficult to achieve high lamb growth rates."

Farmers needed to plan ahead with their management in autumn and winter to achieve the necessary pasture covers to hit lamb growth rates of 300 grams a day.

He suggested that sheep farmers adopt the practice of dairy farmers where they set aside a date within spring where their goal is to have an average pasture cover across pastures that multiple ewes will graze.

Farmers were still working to systems where most of their ewes had single lambs and the ewe and lamb could cope with having a lower body condition score.

However the majority of ewes now have twins or triplets, he said.

Ewes now had to produce enough colostrum for two to three lambs meaning their condition was more important.

If they were underfed, the ewe would not hit its peak lactation, Mr Fraser said.

In the two weeks prior to lambing a 65kg ewe pregnant with twins has to eat 9.2kg of fresh herbage a day to maintain its BCS. After lambing that increases to 19kg of herbage a day.

"It amazes me that a 65kg ewe can eat this amount of grass in a day, but that's what they do. It's a big pile of grass."

He also suggested farmers introduce their ewe hoggets to grain as a supplement so the sheep were familiar with it as a food source in case it needed to be fed to them in order to hit the required feed levels coming into lambing.

"The potential is there and if we are going to be getting $120 for our lambs we need to try to get as many of those lambs surviving through to weaning as we can," he said.