It’s been my experience over many years to see or hear sheep producers taking unusual (perhaps extreme) measures to help them and their sheep get through extreme and prolonged drought.
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An example of this was the weaning of merino lambs from their mothers much, much earlier than usual.
Thinking back to 1986 I saw a bold and courageous decision to wean merino lambs at a very young age and light weight prove to be very successful for district farmer Tony Milgate.
The success of this “Cradle Snatch Weaning” was all the more remarkable because it was immediately followed by lamb marking and introduction to unlimited access to whole wheat grain in a self feeder.
At the beginning of April 1986 Tony Milgate of “Rockview” Cooks Myall, had no green pasture or crop to feed his ewes and January to March merino lambs.
Unable to afford the luxury of continuing to feed his ewes heavily on wheat to maintain enough milk for their lambs; he decided put to the ewes on to a maintenance ration and feed their 200 very early weaned lambs on a high protein production ration from a self feeder in a ¾ acre paddock until rain came and produced enough green feed to fully support them. Immediately after weaning Tony Milgate’s lambs went onto wheat trailed out on the ground for two days.
At my suggestion he fed lime with the wheat during this time but instead of adding lime at 6% he fed it at 12%. This may have been a blessing in disguise because the lambs didn’t scour and settled quickly on the production ration in the self feeder.
The fact that the lambs had previous experience with wheat whilst on their mother was also very important in the smooth transition.
The feed mixture for his lambs put together by Tony Milgate was as follows: Wheat 73%; cotton seed meal 10%; lime 4%; milk powder 2.5%; salt 1.2%; lucerne chaff 9.3%.
Some lucerne hay was also fed until the end of April when a short green pick was grazed occasionally by the weaners.
Lamb performance: A 10% randomly selected sample of Tony’s lambs were weighed periodically between weaning (at the end of March) and early July.
In that time they gained just over seven kilograms at an average daily rate of gain of 80 grams per day.
While they managed to also get a bit of green pick and hay the 16% protein self feeder mixture was their mainstay.
They had access to good quality bore water all the time. Each lamb ate an average of 38.5 kilograms of mixture over an 89 day period.
This meant a daily intake of about 430 grams of feed mixture. This gave them an excellent conversion ratio of feed eaten to live weight gained of about 5.5 to 1.
It cost Tony Milgate about 35 cents per lamb per week for the 13 weeks he fed his lambs to take them from an average age of six weeks and nine kilograms live weight to 19 weeks and 16 kilograms average live weight.
Even if the cost of feed for the 5% of lambs which didn’t make it was added to the $4.55 per head bill for the survivors Tony was adamant that he wouldn’t hesitate to wean early feed again if the need arose.
He reckoned his major problem was fly strike on the tail of some lambs on the sites where rings had been placed at marking.
Contributed by Frank Donnelly, Sheep Wool Adviser 1967 to 1992 with NSW Department of Agriculture, Parkes.
Footnote: Tony Milgate is now again feedlotting merino lambs weaned a bit older and heavier than the 1986 lambs. Frank Donnelly’s original article ‘“Cradle Snatch Weaning” - great success on Parkes District Farm’ was published in the Parkes Champion Post during the drought in 1986.
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