Lambing

The Lambs have Sprung!

Welcome to my blog. I am Jonathon Clarke, the Farm Manager at Nethermoreton Farm at Moreton Morrell. I have been the farm manager here for just under a year now and prior to that I taught agriculture at the college for six years. I thought it was about time I joined the community of bloggers to let everyone know what goes on at the farm. Please feel free to ask me any questions or post your comments.

As well as being an educational resource for the students at college, we are a commercial enterprise with a dairy herd, beef herd and flock of sheep. We supply about 3000 litres of milk to Dairycrest daily, which will appear in supermarkets within 36 hours of milking. We also sell pedigree beef cattle to other farmers for breeding. A good bull can sell for £1,250 or more.

March is a very busy time for us as our 300-strong flock of sheep give birth to their lambs. This year so far we have had over 600 lambs and are just waiting on the last 6 ewes to lamb which should give us 12 more lambs.

Lambing video on The Farm on our YouTube channel

During lambing season, which for us started in the last week of February and will end in the first week of April, we employ one of our agriculture lecturers as a shepherdess to manage the sheep sheds during the day, whilst at the weekends and evenings myself and Dave the stockman take over. The students will be very involved during the day but also work night shifts.

Here are the basic steps that are taken to ensure the sheep and their lambs are as comfortable as possible from birth to adulthood.

move the sheep indoors – all the flock are moved into polytunnels and sheds so we can monitor them as they reach full-term
extra feed – ewes are given high energy feed depending on how many lambs they are carrying.
create pens for the mothers and lambs – once the ewe has given birth (ideally each ewe will have 2 lambs) we move them into a small pen so they can bond with each other. If one ewe has only one lamb and another has three, we will foster one of the triplets onto the ewe with only one lamb.
move the ewe and lambs to a ‘mothering-up pen’ – these are larger pens where groups of 6 or 7 ewes and their lambs socialise together before going out into the main field. This happens when the lambs are about 3 days old. This ensures the lambs can find their mothers and are feeding well enough before going out into the fields.
ear tagging – all the lambs are given ear tags to identify them. One of the tags is electronic, so we can monitor them and store the results on a database so we can tell how efficient and profitable the flock is.
moving out to the field – after 3 – 5 days in the mothering up pens we move the ewes and lambs into the fields. Each lamb is caught and vaccinated against a dermatitis problem called ‘Orf.’
regular checking – once they are out in the fields we check on them twice a day to ensure they are well and have not lost their mothers.
during summer – they will stay in the fields until Autumn, when we start to pick out the lambs that have grown well and are fat enough to go for meat (yes I know it sounds horrible but our business is food production!!!!)

Now lambing season is almost over we are starting to get on with field work. Most of the grass has had its first dressing of fertiliser and we have started creating seedbeds ready to plant maize for cattle winter feed.

The last week or two of April gives us some respite before the busy summer months arrive.

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