ANIMAL MANAGEMENT
Indoor starts for triplets paying dividends When Matt and Lynley Wyeth woke up to find they had lost 1,000 lambs in an overnight storm during 2011, they felt helpless but it hardened their resolve to find a way to reduce catastrophic losses like these. The couple run 7,000 Highlander ewes, 220 beef cows and 150 finishing deer on 1,000 hectares at Kaituna, 15km northwest of Masterton. Some of the land is steep and springs can be cold - lamb losses are inevitable but the Wyeths wanted to get far better results from the exceptional lamb drops and lactation their ewes can deliver. The Highlanders include a touch of Finn and with scanning percentages of 205 and 218 percent for the two-tooths and mixedage ewes respectively, it’s clear there are plenty of triplets in the mix. In fact, about 1,200 ewes each year carry three or more lambs. Last year the docking percentage over the whole flock was 154 percent. Matt Wyeth says every lamb should count and farmers who “set stock and head for the skifields” at lambing are missing out on a lot of potential profit. The flock’s fecundity is based purely on genetics and excellent nutrition, Lynley adds. The couple had a well-developed orphan raising system in place, with 250 lambs being raised in the shed last year. They are fed calf colostrum milk, either entirely or 50/50 with Agrivantage’s SprayFo milk replacer, depending on availability of colostrum. The lambs stay in the shed for four weeks before being turned out to pasture. Their diet also includes Sharpes stock feed.
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In 2012 they stepped things up with a programme to house triplet-bearing ewes for the birth of their lambs and motheringon. The initial trial was under Beef + Lamb New Zealand’s Farmer-Initiated Technology Transfer (FITT) programme.
is combined with levamisole to provide a boosted ewe immune response to maximise antibodies in the colostrum. This is ideal for multiples where suckling lambs share colostrum, enabling them to get the best clostridial protection on offer.
Simple pens are set up in the sheds using flat-pack plywood and straw bedding and hygiene is a high priority. The ewes are prepared for their short confinement with an Advantage creep feeder using Sharpes meal – dyed blue so that ewes that have taken to the hard feed can be identified by their blue mouths. They are in the shed for an average five or six days before they lamb. They give birth in individual pens, where they stay for a few hours before being moved to mixing pens with several other ewes with lambs, so that they can mother on properly before being turned out to nearby pasture.
The promising results from 2012 were built on last year but the Wyeths know that it will take several years to identify all the risks, rewards and best practice for what is fairly uncharted territory in New Zealand. The triplet-bearing ewes produced an excellent 290 percent lambing percentage when they were turned out but losses in the paddock shaved this back to 250 percent by docking – somewhat below the target of 270 percent.
About 400 triplet-bearing ewes had their lambs in the shed in 2012 and the results were promising. The two-tooths did especially well, with a docking percentage of 255 percent. There were no deaths among the two-tooths compared with a 6.9 percent loss in the control flock, while lamb wastage was seven percent less in the shed-born flock. The mixed age triplet bearers produced 234 percent at docking, compared with 225 percent in the pasturebased controls. The FITT trial has now morphed into a four-year Beef + Lamb programme with objectives agreed by the board and support from companies including MSD Animal Health. The pre-lamb treatment, given to the entire ewe flock, is NILVAX®. With NILVAX, the 5-in-1 clostridial vaccine
Lynley Wyeth says they are considering taking one lamb off each set of triplets for raising in the orphan mob, with the ewe left to raise “twins”. This year the Wyeths are planning to turn this idea on its head and extend it, diverting the biggest of the triplets to the orphan mob and leaving the smaller two with their dam. “Lambs always do best on mum, so this way they will all get a good start,” Lynley says. The couple are highly enthused by the progress made so far and are keen to share what they’ve learned with other farmers. They know there are challenges ahead and while they can’t control the weather, they’re confident they can work smarter to protect each year’s lamb crop against unnecessary losses. Article supplied by Coopers.
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