A Shelford farmer has overhauled his lambing program after struggling with a low lambing percentage over the past couple of years.
Scott Norton, 40, described last year’s lambing as “diabolical” after he battled with a severe virus and cold weather conditions which killed a number of his young lambs.
Mr Norton runs 3800 Merino ewes and White Suffolk lambs at Leighburn, Shelford, all of which were hit by a bacteria called campylobacter last year.
“The bacteria is found naturally in some sheep, and it causes abortions, and weak lambs, we lost half of our lambs last year,” Mr Norton said.
Mr Norton now vaccinates all of the sheep against the virus, and said he hasn’t had any issues since.
“Last year was diabolical, but generally our lambing rates are around 80 to 85 per cent.”
This year, he achieved a 118 per cent scanning rate, and he’s hoping this will lead to at least a 90 per cent lambing rate.
He said he’s happy for the ewes to just breed singles, as twins put a lot of strain on the ewe’s body.
“Everyone wants twins, but I think that if we can produce one good lamb in Merinos, which survives, I’d be happy with that.”
Mr Norton also planted about 3000 trees out on the paddocks, in the hope that the ewes would use them as shelter when lambing.
“We lamb on 10 to 17-hectare paddocks in mobs of about 150-350 ewes depending on pregnancy status, and even with the trees, the ewes will lamb in the middle of the paddock, away from everything,” he said.
“This coming year, I’m going to trial planting tall wheatgrass hedgerows within the paddocks, as a way to force the ewes to lamb near protection.”
Rams are put out for a five-week joining period in mid-February, at about 1:50 ewes.
Mr Norton is thinking of moving this date forward, so lambing begins in early August, rather than July.
He hopes that by lambing during a slightly warmer time of year, this may help improve his lamb survival rate, which is something they’ve struggled with over the last couple of years.
He’s also trialing a new stud in south-east South Australia this year, called Tuckwood Poll Merinos, which he hopes will increase the muscle and fat traits in lambs to improve their survival.
“I got eight or nine rams from South Australia, and I’ve split an age group of ewes in half, and put half of the age group with the original rams, and the other half with the Tuckwood rams,” he said.
“We’ve only just finished lambing, so we’ll see how that goes.”
Mr Norton moved to Australia from South Africa 18 years ago.
He lived in South Australia for seven years, in Hamilton for two, and has been in his current position, farm manager, for almost nine years.
Mr Norton enjoys the freedom he’s been given by the off-farm owners, Robert and Ariane Trethewey, to make the majority of the big decisions on the farm.
“Robert will come out from time to time to do maintenance, and help out at seeding time and hay time, and those sorts of things, but I generally make the day to day and seasonal decisions, on budgets, crops, and sheep, for example,” he said.
He said he is planning on increasing his total number of sheep back to about 6000 over the next couple of years.
“I’m working really hard at the moment to get the pastures up and running again and putting in lucerne and chicory so we can increase that stocking rate,” he said.
“But for now, with what we’ve got, we’re pretty happy with that figure.”
Mr Norton has been achieving a fleece weight of about 5.5kg; he said he’s trying to increase this to about 6 to 6.5kg.
His long-term micron average is 19, a figure he is happy with.
He’s also been achieving a decent staple length, which is something he credits to the current breed of Merinos that he sources from Brooklands and Sorell Springs, Tasmania.
“They’ve got bright, white wool, are good-sized sheep, and have a good staple length,” he said.
“I currently shear every 12 months, in November, but I could go to eight-month shearing because I’ve got good staple length, at 12 months we’re nudging about 110mm, if I go down to eight months, we should still be able to achieve about 60 to 70mm.”
