"Achieving a Compact Lambing" Hans Pörksen reports how his neighbour Ian Fenwick, farm manager for Mrs Betty Campbell at Rothley East Shield, Longwitton Morpeth , Northumberland is using the ram effect to full advantage. The 205 ha LFA all grass farm carries 85 Lim cross suckler cows, 500 mule and 300 horned ewes which are Swaledales and Lanark type Scottish Blackface crosses, as well as 210 hoggs. All female sheep are homebred and rams are bought in. Summer management Ewes are not in contact with the rams at any stage and rams are kept at least a field away. When routine treatments such as dosing, foot trimming or dipping is carried out rams always go last through the pens. This prevents the rams pheromones from kick starting the ewes oestrus cycle. This is particularly important post weaning. Pre tupping management Ewes are generally in good condition at Rothley and to prevent too many triplets being born ewes are kept on bare pasture and not flushed. Rams have all routine treatments done to them weeks before tupping and are fed to be in at least condition score 4. 9 days before turnout rams are put into the sheep pens overnight. They are allowed to roam around all the pens and races and by the morning the entire pens stink of rams. In technical terms the rams pheromones are now all over the place and are getting into the ewes when they breath them in the following morning when they all come into the pens to be dosed and tailed. The rams are left in a pen next to the treatment race so all ewes have the opportunity to have nose contact with a ram. The effect of all the females on the rams is also noticeable and they get very worked up. Tupping management Rams are put out 9 days later at 50 ewes per ram and are tupping up to 150 ewes in a mob. If ram lambs are used they are given a maximum of 40 ewes each. So 3 Suffolk ram lambs would be put out with a group of 120 mules. Ram lambs are put out for 17 days only ( one cycle ) and brought back in, to be fed well to build them up again so that they grow on to become big powerful shearlings. For the first 10 days no keel or raddle is used on the mules so they are white, then its 7 days red and then blue until the rams come back in 37 days after turnout. They are fed concentrates and build back up to at least CS 4. No harnesses are used at Rothley, crayons are melted with a blow torch in a pan and while still soft and runny are applied to the tups brisket. In practice rams are caught once for red and once for blue. In 2002 tups were turned out with the mules on the 30th of October, 353 ewes were white, 118 red and 29 were blue. The horned ewes were tupped from the 8th of November and left white for 7 days only to facilitate housing at lambing, they are then left 10 days red and 18 days blue. In 2002 there were 198 white, 89 red and 25 blue. Scanning results:   Mules 2001 2002 Horned ewes 2001 2002               Expecting 0   4 3   14 7   1   52 51   80 79   2   281 376   232 214   3   126 70   12 19 Total Tupped 463   500 338   319         Potential lambing %     214 202   171 176 In the past the mules had caused most problems at lambing time due to the large number of triplets. The change in pre tupping management to not flushing the ewes has been very beneficial this season with 37 more mules to the tup there were 56 less triplets, the singles the same and twins up 95. Benefits of a compact lambing Labour management is much easier and a lambing man this year was only employed for 3 weeks when only 50 ewes were left to lamb. Lambing facilities have to be well organised and Ian says from day 8 into lambing it gets very busy. This year 180 ewes lambed in a two day period. As all lambing takes place indoors over 90 individual pens are put up and a number of large pens which each take a group of up to 12 ewes and lambs. Ewes and lambs are put out onto grass when they are 3 days old and fully bonded, so very little mothering up needs to be done outside. Fostering is very easy now as ewes are clearly marked at scanning and a ewe expecting a single can be given a wet triplet before she has her own lamb. Virtually all ewes now go into the fields with twins. Lambing used to be a much longer drawn out period. Ian has increased the mule flock from 300 ewes in 1996 when he came to Rothley to 500 today and lambing is a lot easier now. There are less tailend lambs in the autumn making marketing much easier. This is also due to the use of High Index Suffolk rams from the Sire Reference scheme. Ian sells most lambs live in Scots Gap market and many Suffolk crosses weigh over 50kg when sold. Last season all lambs were sold finished off grass by the end of November and only the last 300 which were mainly mule and horned wethers were fed concentrates. Copyright Hans F Pörksen 2003