As we approach the sheep breeding buying season, the question today is how in practice can this be achieved safely. There are a growing number of globally recognised scientists that believe that it will be 4 – 5 years before the problem is eradicated. Until a vaccine or a simple and effective way of testing
After six months of prolonged and heavy rain on our heavy clay soil, the sheep not surprisingly clearly lost some condition by the time lambing started at the end of March. 2 1/2 weeks after lambing started and as predicted by Ian Beckett who does our scanning, 95% of the sheep had lambed, and without
July 2019 The weather dominates as usual. Just this spring/summer is the opposite to last year. We all have an embarrassing abundance of grass. I don’t want to be down to the last couple of bales of haylage again like we were this very kind spring. Lambs are obviously growing really well (as
Spring 2019 – June With lambing now behind us we are able to objectively look at how the winter and early spring have impacted the flock. Not surprisingly 6 months of generally mild and dry weather resulted in ewes in perhaps too good condition, but for us this did not result in particularly large
August 2018 We continue to look with increasing anxiety at the weather maps like everyone else, but increasingly hopeful that the worst of the drought is behind us. We are on heavy land, so we are not completely barren. All the fields were either topped or cut for haylage or hay by early July.