The Farmers Mart Oct/Nov 2013 - Issue 30 | Page 44

SHEEP

Boosting Hill Flock Productivity
is Peebles Monitor Farm Priority
Improving the productivity of the hill flock was the main discussion topic
at the recent Peebles monitor farm meeting, hosted by Ed and Kate
Rowell, who farm Hundleshope Farm, three miles south of Peebles.
A 1,800 acre (729 ha) unit,
it is a recent addition to the
network of QMS monitor
farms in Scotland.
Almost 1,450 acres of the
farm is classified as hill, with
the interlocking heather-clad
hills peaking at 2,200 feet.
The Rowells run a stratified
sheep enterprise, with the hills
grazed by the base flock of
350 Scottish Blackface ewes.
These Blackface ewes, tupped
from late November, are bred
pure, generally achieving four
crops.
Blackface gimmers are
tupped by Bluefaced
Leicesters, to produce Scotch
Mule replacements for the
in-bye flock of 450, which are
crossed with terminal sires for
prime lamb production.
While scanning figures
for the Rowells’ Blackfaces
over the last four years are
improving, from 67% in 2010
to 94% in 2013, the end
results are still disappointing.
This year, 323 ewes scanned
94% (303 lambs), 234
lambs (72%) were born alive,
with 219 “plus some not
gathered and still on the hill”,
representing 68%, tallied at
shearing on 27th July. “In that
scan of 94%, there were 40
pairs of twins, but worryingly
60 empty ewes,” Ed Rowell
told the community group.
“Currently our Blackies are
not producing enough lambs
for us to be selective with
replacement ewe lambs,”
added Kate Rowell.
“Ideally we would like to
select replacements from
ewes which have a trouble-

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Oct/Nov 2013 FarmersMart

free lambing and keep their
condition while rearing
quality, weighty lambs. But
in reality we keep every
Blackie ewe lamb, and even
then sometimes don’t have
enough.
“In the past, to maintain hill
flock numbers, we’ve had to
buy in Blackface ewe lambs.
We purchased 80 in 2011,
which didn’t work well. They
didn’t know the hill and just
hung about at the bottom, and
even though we tried driving
them up, they just came back
down again!
“Our initial target is to annually
average a lamb per ewe. But
while we are forced to keep
every ewe lamb, irrespective
of her quality or whether or not
her mother actually produced
a lamb the previous year,
we know it will be difficult to
achieve our target.
“We’re aware that we must
build improvements into the hill
flock, from the bottom up, to
have any hope of lifting flock
fertility and the quality of lambs
the ewes produce.”
The ewes are not hefted,
making gathering time
consuming and challenging.
Usually the flock is gathered
for clipping towards end of
July, weaning is scheduled for
September (19th September
this year), tupping at end of
November and then scanning
in February. Ed Rowell
explained that due to the
miserable summer of 2012,
last year they gathered the hill
three times instead of four, by
amalgamating the weaning and
tupping gather.

Ed and Kate Rowell

The group recommended
delaying shearing in the future,
until around 20th August,
and combine weaning with
shearing. Then to turn the
ewes onto better grazing,
to “flush” them, giving them
the opportunity to regain
some condition post-weaning
and pre-tupping, to improve
conception rates.
The ewes are tupped on
in-bye ground and in recent
years have been given high
energy blocks at tupping.
“We think that these blocks
have helped improve the
scanning rate,” commented
Kate Rowell. The group
recommended also providing
feed blocks out on the hill, to
help sustain the ewes and aid
embryo survival after tupping.
Regarding the current practice
of mating the gimmers with
Bluefaced Leicesters, the

group recommended that
instead of culling the four crop
ewes, check them over, put the
sounder ones to the Bluefaced
Leicester and tup the gimmers
with Blackfaces.
Over the last five years the
Rowells have invested in
some performance recorded
tups. “We’ve also bought tups
at auction, which we knew
absolutely nothing about,”
added Kate Rowell. “And
we’ve decided that we would
definitely prefer to have some
indication as to how tups will
breed. So this year we’ve
purchased three performancerecorded Blackface shearlings
from the same breeder. The
EBVs (estimated breeding
values) for these tups are really
good for the traits we need
– maternal ability, litter size,
eight week weight and mature
size.”

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