Time to soak up the blame

Communication is the key to almost everything we do. Which can be an obstacle for farmers who often work in isolation.

Not needing to share decision-making can lead to not having to justify decisions. Actions can get ingrained which becomes the obstacle to change.

When forced to engage with me or other advisers because something is going badly wrong, communication makes or breaks the success of that engagement.

At one such encounter last month I ended up getting angry because I was getting the blame for what had gone wrong. While anger never helps get a result, sometimes it can help reinforce a message. That is what I tell myself. Soaking up the blame was what was needed. We were able to continue the conversation despite my anger. At least this conversation was about something the farmer can do something about. Unlike the spring.

Spring is such an important part of the year because of the huge impact on the rest of the year and beyond. Yet it is highly variable and a difficult time of the year to have control over.

Early spring nitrogen has been a standard input for many hill country farmers to underpin the pasture supply. Feeding lambing/calving stock enough at birth can have a massive impact. It supports lactation and newborn survival.

I was asking a southern client recently about the severity of the bad weather and its impact on lambing. The news was telling me it was bad, which it was. But my client was not concerned because he had good pasture covers under the ewes and good ewe condition. Both such powerful buffers against the bad weather.

It was comforting that the farmer had the confidence in feed and condition. I guess how sound that confidence was is yet to be known. The way spring has been slow to start for many, for those who chose to apply nitrogen the physical reward is evident. Translating that into a financial reward is the next challenge.

Wind is underrated in the damage it does in spring. I know of newborn calves that have succumbed to severe wind this spring. For lambs, wind can be very damaging because it interferes with the vocal connection between the newborn and its mother, an important part of mothering up. I am hearing of some terrible triplet lamb survival due to weather intrusion, but for most of those the triplets were lambing on flats.

My experience with triplets on flats is that the lack of lambing site options results in them all lambing together. The lack of shelter as well can mean lots of losses. The best consistent triplet lambing outcomes I know are when they are lambed on the hills.

For some parts of the country there were plenty of bearings. But this is far from being widespread. I have always been fascinated by how widespread bearings and/or ewe deaths can be, as if there was a single factor across large areas triggering them.

Sunspots was the factor suggested to me once by someone wearing a green cardigan and wearing sandals. But the factor behind bearings in many places was an outcome of such a growthy autumn. Lots of pasture got taken into the winter and many flocks got overfed mid-pregnancy. We know that sets up the susceptibility to bearings. Other triggers come into play once nearer lambing.

Ewe deaths are a regular cost to production and the big range suggests management factors. Even in closely shepherded flocks up to 5% of ewes die over lambing. The best I see in unshepherded hill country flocks is 5%. Claims of much less than this I treat with caution.

More than 95% of deaths are in multiple ewes and about 70% are four years or more old. The highest risk in a sheep flock are older multiple ewes, and if carrying three lambs that risk is even higher.

Much of these losses are due to a metabolic imbalance by being on the wrong feed. One of the data conflicts discussed annually is the death and missing number in the annual accounts. This is always higher than is recorded or guessed at. Imprecise stock counts must be a common cause of this discrepancy. But sheep losses can be high without there being much sign. I think metabolic losses hide deaths unlike the bearing losses which are always where you see them. Why do they hide? That is another story.

Trevor Cook is a production animal consultant/ veterinarian in Feilding.