CREEP GRAZING OF LAMBS

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28222, 9 March 1957, Page 9

CREEP GRAZING OF LAMBS

ENGLISH TRIALS DESCRIBED

An experiment in England with creep grazing of lambs was described by the New Zealander, Professor M. McG. Cooper, Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Durham, in a paper prepared for the New Zealand Grassland Association’s eighteenth conference held at Canterbury Agricultural College. Lincoln, in November.

“We have been experimenting at Cockle Park with a system of rotational grazing which avoids most of the competition from the ewe for the best grass from the time that the lambs are at seven to eight weeks old,” he said. “We had observed that about this stage there was a marked decline in the ewe’s milk production and that she was becoming progressively a less efficient middleman in the chain of fat lamb production. We have borrowed an idea from the old folding system of sheep farming, namely, the provision of creeps, so that the lambs, but not the ewes, can pass through to the clean fresh grass of the next field in the rotation. “Twin lambs which had been creep grazed during the last season at the rate of five ewes and 10 lambs an acre, weighed 831 b at 16 weeks, compared with 721 b for corresponding lambs on ordinary rotational grazing. More than 70 per cent, of these twins were fat off the mother, compared with 20 per cent, for those on ordinary rotational grazing. Absolute results would have been better were it not for a severe infestation of Nematodirus spp. as a result of the area being heavily stocked with ewes and lambs in the previous season. Infection was much Ipwer in the creep lambs, presumably because they were able to take the- top growth and the ewes did the cleaning up. In the ordinary rotational grazing, the lambs too, were asked to act as mowing machines and they suffered not only from the higher worm infection but also from a saw tooth in their plane of nutrition.

“We have tried the method out on a field scale and it has worked admirably up to the point where the ewes were shorn. Even then it prevented those which were putting on flesh, rather than producing milk, from gaining access to the best grazing. It promises to be most useful where early lambing is adopted, and an endeavour is being made with small flocks of 80 to 100 ewes to catch the early market for lambs in mid-May through to early July.”