Lambing Report 2018

The following documents our statistics from this year's lambing season, records some of the lessons we learned (things that worked; things that didn't), and outlines changes we plan on implementing next year.

Benchmarks

For the last four years, we have compared the performance of our ewes against U.S. sheep industry benchmarks, as well as against our own internal goals. The following table summarizes this analysis.

	Benchmark	FMF Goal	2015	2016	2017	2018
Open Ewes	7.0%	<3.0%	6.4%	3.5%	0.0%	9.0%
Flushing Ration			Pasture	Pasture & Pea Crisps	Pasture & Canola Pellets	Pasture & Oat Screenings
Lambing Rate	150.0%	160.0%	137.0%	181.8%	169.6%	170.5%
Live Lambs/Ewe		1.6	1.24	1.69	1.61	1.62
Bottle Lambs (%)		5%	4.0%	2.0%	9.5%	4.2%
Stillborn (%)		0%	2.0%	0.0%	4.2%	3.8%
Deathloss (%)	15%	5%	3.0%	7.0%	1.1%	4.8%
Cull Ewes (%)	10%	5%	11.5%	7.0%	8.9%	11.9%

Observations/Lessons Learned

• Does flushing pay? If we compare the added cost of purchasing oat screenings in 2018 against the "no-cost" flushing ration of irrigated pasture we used to prepare for the 2015 lamb crop, we probably had 25 more lambs this year than we would have had in 2015. At a total cost of $372, this year's flushing ration cost us $15.12 per extra lamb. I estimate the value of an extra lamb at sale time to be approximately $113 (depending on weight, etc.). Flushing does seem to make economic sense.
• Shelter: Once again, we parked our gooseneck trailer in close proximity to our early lambing paddocks. This gave us the option of penning ewes whose lambs needed a bit extra time to get going, especially during cold storms. This worked well, for the most part - we did have one night during a particularly cold storm where we may have put too many ewes and lambs in the trailer (which likely resulted in mis-mothering). In the future, we may consider building partitions which would allow us to house four ewes with their lamb(s) in separate pens in the trailer.
• LambMacs: About a week into lambing, we discovered plastic, biodegradable lamb rain coats (LambMacs from Shearwell in the UK). We used these successfully during several cold storms as an alternative to penning otherwise healthy, vigorous, and well-mothered lambs.
• Open Ewes: We had a higher rate of open ewes this year, probably because our ewe flock is getting older. We'll cull most of these open ewes this year (which is reflected in our higher cull rate as well).
• Moving Pairs: For the most part, this went well this year. We had one move (back to the corrals for shipping) that was especially difficult. We may have set up the start of the move wrong, and the sheep were hungry (which meant they bolted to fresh feed). 
• Training New LGDs: We used Reno and Bodie together at the beginning of lambing. Reno (the experienced dog) enforced appropriate behavior on Bodie's part. After a few confrontations, Bodie settled in and did a great job.
• EZ-Care: Our EZ-Care scoring system continues to result in solid mothering ability and lambing ease.

Changes for 2019

The primary change we're anticipating for the coming year involves the use of electronic identification (EID) tags. Rather than putting lamb tags in at lambing and adding scrapie tags at weaning, lambs will receive an EID tag at lambing. We'll be able to utilize software to track the information we currently record by hand, which should make subsequent work (weaning, culling, etc.) easier and more labor efficient.