Tough season on Ashley Dene

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32612, 21 May 1971, Page 14

Tough season on Ashley Dene

Lincoln College’s light land property, Ashley Dene, has been hit hard by drought in the last few months. In four months the property only had two inches of rain and supplementary feeding of sheep began straight after the New Year. Professor I. E. Coop, professor of animal science at the college, told farmers who visited the property on a beef cattle field afternoon this week that this drought had been worse than the last one. The farm manager, Mr R. M. Nicholl, estimated that it would cost about $1 per head to get the ewes through from the new year till the end of the winter, .taking into account the cost of straw and barley. Outlining the procedure that had been followed, Mr Nichdll said that the ewes had been split up into three mobs, on the basis of condition, and the C mob which weighed 1081 b when supplementary feeding began, had been fed

four bales of straw per 100 and a 41b of barley per head during the summer; the B mob averaging 1221 b at the outset three bales of straw and a jib of barley, and the A mob averaging 1381 b, two bales of straw per 100 for quite a long time before also receiving about a Jib of barley per head from about early March. They began to take weight off the A mob and they were also prepared for the B mob to lose some weight, but the aim was to hold the C mob. By the end of March, Mr Nicholl said that the A mob weighed 1251 b, the B mob 114 and the C mob was steady at 1081 b. They had been put into their tupping mobs, in which the main mob, comprising the Border - Corriedales, averaged 1141 b and the Corriedales 1061 b. Then 10 days before tupping and for a period of 27 days they had been boosted with 2} bales of ryegrass straw and H bales of hay per 100 and lib of barley per head so that the main mob gained l|lb to average 11541 b and the Corriedales 21b to average 1081 b. Mr Nicholl said that the regular weighing had meant that they had known where their sheep were going and

they had been able to control what'was happening to them reasonably well. Two or three years ago they had not started weighing early enough and the sheep had started to slide and as a result they had had a relatively disastrous lambing percentage of 99. They were hoping for 105 to 110 per cent on this occasion. Now he said the ewes were receiving two bales and a half of straw per 100 and up to twp or three days ago they had also been receiving 6oz of barley, but this had now been cut out and they were getting 20 minutes on greenfeed a day. As soon as tupping was completed the ewes would again be split into groups on the basis of condition so that preference could be given to those that needed it. They would not like to see the Corriedales come down below 951 b or the Border-Corrledales below 1051 b. The visitors were told that the ewes were now on a little more than half a maintenance ration and it would be expected that they would lose bodyweight at about 21b per week. Now was the time to take body-weight off these sheep, Professor Coop said.