A Client’s Observation

A Kerin Poll client rang us a while ago to share some of his thoughts, and we love it when this happens.

He asked if there is more to breeding sheep than putting the best rams over the best ewes. 

He posed the question – are the great results he is getting a result not only the genes he uses but to the “whole of life nutrition/management of that sheep”.

That client knows a sheep’s lifetime performance is set up at conception and then needs to be managed well right up until that sheep leaves the farm as a CFA ewe on the back of a truck.

If the whole-of-life nutrition is set up properly right from the start and along the way, the sheep are definitely more resilient to worm pressure.

Thanks to the whole of life nutrition, sheep also:

• Can be joined as a ewe lamb as part of normal practice
• Cuts more wool
• Consistently gets in lamb and weans more than 140 per cent to ewes joined
• Is simply a more resilient animal

If nutrition is considered as a whole of life concept, poor scanning results are eliminated, and high conception rates are consistent regardless of seasonal conditions.

It results in wether lambs running up onto the truck up to three months earlier than those produced under conventional mindset management.

It results in a better-quality/tensile strength wool due to consistent, high quality nutrition, and ironically leads to a reduction of inputs because they are a robust, healthy animal.

Why is it that we can containment feed a 70kg ewe a total of 4.2kg of barley a week where she maintains a BCS of 2.8 for four and a half months while in containment?

A nutritionist will tell you that a ewe should lose bodyweight because her energy needs are simply not being met. We feed our ewes less, but they maintain condition score. Go figure???

It comes down to lots of things including early development of the rumen and that’s a result of early weaning. It’s thinking about the whole of life nutrition management of sheep.

It’s certainly food for thought.