Should I finish my lambs or sell them as stores?
If concentrate feeding, avoid too much starch or finely ground ingredients, coarse ingredients are better, but attract more crows and lambs tend to sort and leave unpalatable ingredients.
With the large number of store lambs currently on farms, farmers are considering finishing lambs, selling as stores, or buying store lambs for finishing.
The target is to finish store lambs from grazed grass, however, many producers are not able to achieve this and will need to supplement their lambs with concentrate feeding.
For lowland sheep farmers, it is best to divide lambs into three weight brackets less than 30kg, 30-38kg, and over 38kg. You can then see the proportion of lambs in each of these categories and identify what grass is available to you.
It would be ideal if you have an outfarm or rented land that can be grazed without affecting available grass for the breeding flock.
The number of lambs you have in the under 30kg category has a poor market value at present so ideally if you could keep these lambs on a grass or forage diet till after Christmas, lamb weight and market value will increase.
The lambs in the 30-38kg category should receive a reasonable store lamb price, depending on grass availability or cash flow you can decide to either finish or sell. Lambs in the finishing group over 38kg can be fed 0.5 to 0.75kg of meal per day and draft as they become fit.
When considering your options remember not to compromise next year’s lamb crop by eating grass needed for breeding ewes.
If concentrate feeding, avoid too much starch or finely ground ingredients, coarse ingredients are better, but attract more crows and lambs tend to sort and leave unpalatable ingredients. The ration should be cereal-based with a high percentage of either maize, barley, oats or wheat.
Growing lambs (less than 35kg) have an additional requirement for protein and should receive a diet containing 14% crude protein. Lambs that are well-grown and in the finishing phase will not benefit from dietary crude protein levels above 12%. If finishing male lambs include ammonium chloride to prevent urinary calculi at an inclusion rate of 0.5% or 5 kg per tonne.
Pasturella pneumonia is an issue for store lambs so focus on prevention, ideally purchase lambs that are vaccinated against Pasturella Pneumonia or vaccinate lambs on arrival for clostridial diseases and Pasturella and give a second vaccine four to six weeks later.
If orf is not already present on your farm and you do not expect it to be present on the bought-in lambs, do not vaccinate as you will be introducing the problem. Discuss with your vet suitable treatment options for stomach worms and liver fluke.
For the treatment of lameness, footbath lambs in copper sulphate solution 10%, and inspect lambs for signs of CODD. To prevent the introduction of scab, plunge dip or treat with an injectable macrocyclic lactone and isolate from the main flock.
The use of pour-on or plunge dipping will also prevent other external parasites such as lice, ticks and blowfly.
Target to keep mortality below 2% for flocks being managed outdoors, for indoor flocks, target a mortality rate of less than 4%.
To support your decision to either finish lambs or sell as stores, log in to the Teagasc website and complete the store lamb finishing calculator.
