AGRICULTURE Victoria producer demonstration sites (PDS) in the northern Mallee have been working to increase lambs weaned by five to 10 per cent using strategies such as pregnancy scanning, nutrition management, optimising joining length, and reducing mob sizes for twin-bearing ewes, as well as other management practices that help to improve reproductive efficiency.
AgVic specialist Erica Schelfhorst said key results to date include strong improvements in scanning and marking percentages and a noticeable reduction in the proportion of dry ewes.
She said a standout success story is from one family business which shifted their lambing period from early May to late July/August.
“The producers told me later lambing has been a major change which has improved their scanning rates and allowed them to better align feed demand with availability,” Ms Schelfhorst said.
“It has also removed the stress of feeding ewes during lambing.”
Dryland producers across the region are predominantly cropping focused but sheep have become a more significant part of the farming landscape in recent years.
An appetite to improve current sheep reproductive performance is being driven by strong lamb prices and increasing numbers of sheep.
A significant need to improve knowledge and skills to address and look for ways to increase the reproduction rates of their sheep was identified by a group of Mallee producers and are being put into practice in an MLA-funded producer demonstration site (PDS) with support from AgVic.
In the first year, host farms focused on the ram effect, separating single and twin-bearing ewes at pregnancy scanning and reducing mob size of twin-bearing ewes at lambing.
The second year involved similar demonstrations, plus one farm changed the time of lambing from April to late July/August, implementing many new practices at the same time.
“As we enter the final year of the PDS we aim to give producers confidence to adopt best-practice reproduction management,” Ms Schelfhorst added.
The results and benefits of later lambing are available at https://go.vic.gov.au/3DB8cnm
Further details are available from Erica Schelfhorst at erica.schelfhorst@agriculture.vic.gov.au
