Spring lamb prices

charolais0153

wrangler wrote: »

We had John Walsh from ICM at our AGM tonight so the mild winter has the hoggets coming in to them too heavy and they're getting too many lambs in July and August.

What can u realistically do abput the glut in july and august. More earlys and april flocks rather than march flocks?

White Clover

wrangler wrote: »

We had John Walsh from ICM at our AGM tonight so the mild winter has the hoggets coming in to them too heavy and they're getting too many lambs in July and August.

Did he say anything about new markets to help stall the price sliding in July and August?

wrangler

charolais0153 wrote: »

What can u realistically do abput the glut in july and august. More earlys and april flocks rather than march flocks?

They won't be encouraging farmers to produce in the summer months so there has to be a price differential, Our group used to have a better spread of production over the year but processors have caused it to tighten up with their pricing arrangement through the year,
If he's serious about what he was preaching last night and they had a bigger gap for out of season lamb, it could be at the expenses of the mid season price so we have to be careful what we pray for
He's very serious about getting us to guarantee supply, don't know if our crowd want to commit to that, like all over the country, the majority of our farmers are older and have less commitments, family reared, college finished etc , so aren't goin to be into that hassle

ganmo

wrangler wrote: »

They won't be encouraging farmers to produce in the summer months so there has to be a price differential, Our group used to have a better spread of production over the year but processors have caused it to tighten up with their pricing arrangement through the year,
If he's serious about what he was preaching last night and they had a bigger gap for out of season lamb, it could be at the expenses of the mid season price so we have to be careful what we pray for
He's very serious about getting us to guarantee supply, don't know if our crowd want to commit to that, like all over the country, the majority of our farmers are older and have less commitments, family reared, college finished etc , so aren't goin to be into that hassle

if they want guaranteed supply let them guarantee price

wrangler

ganmo wrote: »

if they want guaranteed supply let them guarantee price

We told him that, we'd be used to dealing with him as we have to thrash a deal every two years.
He was keen to talk last night if we commited to out of season lamb, He says that when he get's shelf space in a supermarket and then can't supply it this time of the year it's extremely hard to get that same shelf space again next year, he was talking about Jan lambing and April/may, Any way I can't see the group running with it, Both systems would be an expensive time to produce lamb

Green farmer

wrangler wrote: »

he was talking about Jan lambing and April/may, Any way I can't see the group running with it, Both systems would be an expensive time to produce lamb

Nothing worse then to give them what they want, only for them to flood the market with imports and deprive you of any decent return. Not much incentive there.

wrangler

Green farmer wrote: »

Nothing worse then to give them what they want, only for them to flood the market with imports and deprive you of any decent return. Not much incentive there.

It'd have to be contracted, worst of contacts is if you miss the terms or don't supply the quality you're penalised.

memorystick

wrangler wrote: »

Yea, we used to do weighings too and lambs eating 1kg/day would put on 2kg easily per week, at that stage (36kg plus) most of the weight gain would be DW as the KO would be shooting up as well.
That would be conditional n two things
1) that the lambs wouldn't be fat already and growing.
2) that they would be in their first six weeks of heavy feeding

After six weeks conversion is poor

Is 8 weeks of meal feeding at 1kg per day enough? Not happy with thrive at moment.

Duke92

Rang and agent on Monday have lambs around 50kg
He said they were offering 5.30 and told me to leave for two weeks that there going to start killing earlier this year for Easter
They think they’ll be in trouble if they leave like other years

wrangler

memorystick wrote: »

Is 8 weeks of meal feeding at 1kg per day enough? Not happy with thrive at moment.

I'm making no guarantees, depends on the ration, we had mill beside us and the nutritionalist had an interest in sheep, but that's what we used to do, pull out the over 36s and give them a creep feeder, we'd be killing off grass at 44% KO and by the end of the feeding we'd be near 50% most would only need a bag, ie 25 -30 days, We found it good to clear out the smaller ones in Oct/ Nov
We'd put them in in bad weather though,

Dinzee Conlee

wrangler wrote: »

I'm making no guarantees, depends on the ration, we had mill beside us and the nutritionalist had an interest in sheep, but that's what we used to do, pull out the over 36s and give them a creep feeder, we'd be killing off grass at 44% KO and by the end of the feeding we'd be near 50% most would only need a bag, ie 25 -30 days, We found it good to clear out the smaller ones in Oct/ Nov
We'd put them in in bad weather though,

As a matter of interest Wrangler - how much ration would they eat in the 30 days? And what weight would they put on?

wrangler

Dinzee Conlee wrote: »

As a matter of interest Wrangler - how much ration would they eat in the 30 days? And what weight would they put on?

They'd be eating a Kilo/day, I'd be disappointed if they weren't putting on 300gms/day.....they'd be putting on 200gms/day on the grass alone......in good dry weather.
Wet weather in autumn really floors the performance, That's when we'd be pulling them for adlib feeding. I get sick of the sight of them in Autumn
Try to have everything gone first of December, they were all gone this year by first of October to let us go to NZ

orm0nd

wrangler wrote: »

We told him that, we'd be used to dealing with him as we have to thrash a deal every two years.
He was keen to talk last night if we commited to out of season lamb, He says that when he get's shelf space in a supermarket and then can't supply it this time of the year it's extremely hard to get that same shelf space again next year, he was talking about Jan lambing and April/may, Any way I can't see the group running with it, Both systems would be an expensive time to produce lamb

I gave up January lambing mostly because of fellows lambing april and may

Lambs ready to go from early April on and factories treating us like dirt, and buying late hoggetts and imported stock instead.

start last week of January now and aim to have most lambs moved before june , a lot more work for us as peak lambing and calving now over lap for a couple of weeks & also means we have to change grass management ,

wrangler

orm0nd wrote: »

I gave up January lambing mostly because of fellows lambing april and may

Lambs ready to go from early April on and factories treating us like dirt, and buying late hoggetts and imported stock instead.

start last week of January now and aim to have most lambs moved before june , a lot more work for us as peak lambing and calving now over lap for a couple of weeks & also means we have to change grass management ,

Yea they've brought it on themselves, it'll be hard now to get people to go out of season, I just try to have them now to keep grass down, even if I was back with over 500 I'd never lamb early......or april either

orm0nd

wrangler wrote: »

Yea they've brought it on themselves, it'll be hard now to get people to go out of season, I just try to have them now to keep grass down, even if I was back with over 500 I'd never lamb early......or april either

early suits the system here , ideally we should be full time dairying , but layout of farm hinders this

kk.man

Any quotes/mart reports for this week or next?

Lambman

Heard off a man who'd fatten alot off sheep had lambs dumped in factory over dog worm? Anybody know what it is or what it does till sheep?

wrangler

Lambman wrote: »

Heard off a man who'd fatten alot off sheep had lambs dumped in factory over dog worm? Anybody know what it is or what it does till sheep?

Tapeworm or neospora, Tapeworm can be horrible looking but I don't know if it'd condemn lambs, I don't know much about neospora.
We always dose dogs here every two months

Lambman

Must look it up... Tapeworms can target flesh as well so maybe if they were very bad but hard till imagine. Fella that told me named another fattener it happened till last year as well...

wrangler

Lambman wrote: »

Must look it up... Tapeworms can target flesh as well so maybe if they were very bad but hard till imagine. Fella that told me named another fattener it happened till last year as well...

Tapeworms are horrible, you can see where the lambs pass them out in the fields, you can imagine a handful of them in a lambs stomach, ugh, In a FEC,you need a microscope to see ordinary worms but taleworms are something else and a lot of wormers don't kill them I think.....never had them here

White Clover

wrangler wrote: »

Tapeworms are horrible, you can see where the lambs pass them out in the fields, you can imagine a handful of them in a lambs stomach, ugh, In a FEC,you need a microscope to see ordinary worms but taleworms are something else and a lot of wormers don't kill them I think.....never had them here

That's what I did last year, I followed your 5 minute rule and thankfully they all came through fine.

Edit: Replied to wrong post!!

Lambman

Yeah most animals can get them even fish. Would I be right in saying them lambs must have had it pre housing or could they pick it up off silage or through meal?

wrangler

Lambman wrote: »

Yeah most animals can get them even fish. Would I be right in saying them lambs must have had it pre housing or could they pick it up off silage or through meal?

You'd imagine they'd pass them out if they weren't wedged in them, They can bore through teh somach wall and get lodged in the kidneys and gut....... all for the want of dosing the dog

Lambman

That's it something that shouldn't be overlooked. Must be them he mentioned when he said dog worm then... Sore lesson on the farmer.

wrangler

Lambman wrote: »

That's it something that shouldn't be overlooked. Must be them he mentioned when he said dog worm then... Sore lesson on the farmer.

A farmer brought one to a discusion group to show us, 9 or 10 ins long, feck, so if a lamb had a handful in her they'd take up a bit of room

Duke92

Heard kepak had 1000 lambs from Scotland and Cumbria last week

wrangler

Duke92 wrote: »

Heard kepak had 1000 lambs from Scotland and Cumbria last week

Years ago a northern lorry turned over on the road outside kepak in Athleague.
I wonder did it even embarass bertie mannion, he'd surely brazen it out

paddysdream

Duke92 wrote: »

Heard kepak had 1000 lambs from Scotland and Cumbria last week

Regular occurence in all the major meat plants.Lot of them seem to have Irish tags though.Make you wonder.
On another note bit of a own goal by the Dept. in not insisting all marts/factories etc have EID reading facilities after insisting farmers switch over to the more expensive tagging regime from June 1st.
Easy see who has to carry the cost of all this for no gain.Will be interesting to see all the new markets this "increased traceability" will bring for our lambs in 2019.

Green farmer

Duke92 wrote: »

Heard kepak had 1000 lambs from Scotland and Cumbria last week

They’d prefer to import lambs and keep the quotes low, rather then give us a extra 10 cent or admit their scarce.

wrangler

paddysdream wrote: »

Regular occurence in all the major meat plants.Lot of them seem to have Irish tags though.Make you wonder.
On another note bit of a own goal by the Dept. in not insisting all marts/factories etc have EID reading facilities after insisting farmers switch over to the more expensive tagging regime from June 1st.
Easy see who has to carry the cost of all this for no gain.Will be interesting to see all the new markets this "increased traceability" will bring for our lambs in 2019.

John walsh (manager ICM) was saying on Tuesday that they've just got the application forms for licensing them to be a Central Recordin premises or something, Apparently they'll read your lambs and hand you a copy for your register........... or something, hopefully no more white sheets, should be great for the store buyers not have to write 15 numbers for every line