May 27, 2025 • 26 mins
Getting more lambs on the ground, and through to weaning, takes more than just good luck. Optimising Lamb Survival, a new podcast series from Beef + Lamb New Zealand, shares practical tips and proven strategies to lift lamb survival and productivity.
In part one, The Country’s Rowena Duncum chats with Dr David Stevens from AgResearch about feed planning, ewe nutrition, and the key factors that make or break your lambing success.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Optimizing Lamb Survival with Beef and Lamb New Zealand to
Powered by the Country. Well, hello and welcome into an
all new podcast series here on the Country. We're looking
at optimizing Lamb Survival and association with Beef and Lamb
New Zealand. My name is Rowena Duncan, Rural lead at
enzed Me, and what I'm aiming to do across three
episodes is provide you with a bunch of practical advice
(00:24):
and proven strategies to help you lift lamb survival and
productivity on farm. Now, I won't be doing that on
my own. I'm a former dairy farmer, not much in
the way of experience at keeping lambs alive. But luckily
for you and for me, Beef and Lamb have got
us a bunch of experts to share their knowledge and experience,
not to mention practical on farm tactics to improve outcomes
(00:47):
from mating decisions and scanning right through the post weening care.
So later in the series we're going to be chatting
to Professor of Sheep Husbandry and Head of School of
Agriculture and Environment at Massive universitys Paul Kenyon, and also
Associate Professor Renee corner Thomas. But to kick us off
in this first episode, I'm fortunate today to be joined
(01:09):
by doctor David Stevens, Senior Scientists for Agricultural Systems at
AG Research. Hi, David, thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Hi, thanks for the invite. It's great to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
No, it is my absolute pleasure. Now tell us a
bit about your background, David. How did you get to
be the senior scientist for Agricultural Systems at AG Research.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, long story, being with EG Research and its predecessors
for about forty years now and started in Gore, which
gave me huge exposure to the sheep industry down there.
So I've had a very long career working alongside farmers.
(01:52):
And obviously the whole idea of lamb survival is absolutely
critical too farm profitability, so we'll talk a little bit
about that, but really what we want to talk about today,
the important part in that is feed planning and how
the you is pervotal in the success of your lambing. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Absolutely, So let's get underway and look at I guess
we could start with the national impacts of the you
on lamb survival. Is it the lamb or the you?
What are your thoughts on this, David, We.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Can look at from different angles. Firstly, that impact at
the national level gives an idea of the size of
the price and our general estimates overall as lamb losses
are somewhere between twenty and thirty percent of the lambs born.
Now that's a big range and it's quite high level.
(02:55):
And one of the reasons for that sort of high
level look is that we really don't get a good
data set at a national scale of scanning and docking data.
It's actually quite hard to find, whereas if you look
at the research studies, what you'll find is that land
losses are much lower than that when people are looking
(03:17):
really hard at it, and somewhere between five and thirteen
percent have been recorded in various trials around New Zealand
at the research level. The interesting thing there that that
puts a huge gap between best practice and current practice.
What that suggests is there are opportunities to change that metric.
(03:41):
Sort of The second part of that becomes what's actually
driving the problem of lamb losses, and quite a pivotal
study was done by Jillian River at Hanks and New
colleagues at a research Invermay back in the mid two thousands,
and the really important bit that came out of that
stuff was the role of the you in those losses.
(04:05):
And interestingly, the conditions that you was exposed to before
she lambed was actually two to three times more important
than the conditions at the time of the birth of
the lamb. So all we have is we have farmers going, oh, yeah,
the weather's really shit at lambing, and that's the problem. Actually,
(04:27):
it's probably the bad weather before lambing that's the real problem.
So the factor is in near the cold stress on
the U leading up to lambing, and then the maternal
behavior of the U around lambing. So that you is
really important in this whole process.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
So the next question in that is can we decide
to find the size of the opportunity for the farmers?
And and Ridler and her team at Massi University, of
which Renee Corner Thomas is one of your future speakers,
they did a nationwide study a couple of years ago
of thirty four farms and looked at how many US
(05:09):
died and how many US didn't rear lambs. And so
that's mortality and morbidity are the two terms technical terms. Now,
that study is absolutely stunning in terms of what we get.
We analyzed ance numbers and we see that the potential
number of us dying every year is five point five percent.
(05:30):
That's written in there, and that's reasonably well understood in
the industry three to five percent. Everybody tries to use
the three number. But that's eight hundred and fifty thousand
US that die each year.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
That's a lot.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
But interestingly, following Julia at Hank's example, the morbidity or
the use not wearing lambs actually adds another two point
two million news who are unproductive. That's a lot.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Yeah, yeah, it definitely adds up, especially when you're looking
at the scale of the farm that this may be
occurring on as well. That's a lot of wing stage. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
So the number that Anne reported with scanning presents one
hundred and eighty four. When we account for triplets, it's
five and a half million lambs going missing. Wow. And
it's around about twenty percent of our lambs going missing
just because the you dies or she doesn't lamb. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yeah, I just honestly, these figures are amazing.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
It is quite phenomenal. Like I say, this is a
brilliant study which has given us the opportunity to put
that in context. So we slaught her about eighteen million
lambs a year and we're talking about five and a
half million going missing. So it's really important.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Yeah, and definitely room for improvement, which is I guess
what this series is really all about, David.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Can it be changed? Exactly?
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Right?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Again, we go back to Add's number and we just
have a look at the top thirty percent of farmers
in there. They're producing twenty five percent more lambs for
sale than the average number, So that's important. And then
when we convert that into a gross margin, they're improving
their profitability by about thirty five percent. Wow, so the
(07:33):
size of the price is enormous.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Yeah, yeah, it absolutely is. So let's look at the
nutrition side of things. So energy and protein, where do
these come from? And what I want to talk about
the nutrition dynamics within the year as well. What can
we look at here? How do we understand this side
of things?
Speaker 2 (07:57):
I suppose where we start is that the U gets
her her energy either from a diet and all of
a nutrition actually from a diet, or she can get
it from her own reserves, right, so she can mobilize fat,
she can extract protein out of her muscles, et cetera.
(08:18):
That's all. So if you have a seventy kilou and
use feeder as if she's a sixty five kilou, she
will end up being sixty five kilos, right, she will.
Only she can only perform the way her diet lets it.
So what farmers did a long time ago was they
(08:41):
balanced that out, and we still do it in the
beef industry. Sometimes we'll feed them a little bit less
so that the whole usable of fat, and sometimes we'll
feed them a little bit more so they put fat
on right, and that fits our pasture life for curves.
But what we we need to consider, if we go
back to Julie ever at Hanks work that those cold
(09:08):
stress leave it leading up to lambing, for example, right
right at that time, you've got a you that might
have two or three lambs insider, which actually take up
quite a lot of space. So that then means that
her potential intake is slightly limited when you as soon
as you start to limit total intake, then you have
to make sure that the feed quality is really high.
(09:30):
And in general we talk about the energy content of
the feet, so if you hasn't got a really high
energy diet, then she starts to use up her own fat,
and then that starts to most In the extreme circumstances,
you'll get various metabolic diseases around lambing. The other thing
(09:58):
here is that if a you ends up really hungry
in late pregnancy, then as soon as the lambs are born,
she has this tendency to wander off and give feed,
and then that's where maternal behavior kicks in. Right, So
Julie's study talked about energy requirements leading up to lambing
and then maternal behavior around lambing as being the most
(10:19):
important things. So the practical outcomes are, we need high
quality feed at that time of the year. We're not
we shouldn't be trying to clean our pastures from last
summer or any of those sort of things. It has
to be freshly ground, new feed.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
So what about the protein side of the equation, David.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Protein's always been considered, but it hasn't really had much
of a focus. Energy fuels the process, but protein is
what builds the growing lamb inside the you. Right, So
energy is just the fuel. The protein is actually the
building block. So what we've seen with some recent study
(11:04):
by Supercords team that have researched grasslands has highlighted this
need for protein in the final stage of pregnancy. And
what they did was they fed fodderbet diets quite close
to lambing, and what they showed was that if protein
is short at that time, lamb loss is basically double.
(11:27):
So that's kind of significant. And when we have a
real look inside to you at the metabolism of that you,
it shows that the you is using really high levels
of her own fat and some of our own protein
to make sure that the growing lamb continues to grow. Basically, however,
(11:51):
she can't substitute everything for that lack in the diet.
So this is a much more in depth study than
the work that Julie and her Tein did earlier on,
but it actually starts to point to some of the
underlying causes of what's going on in this process. So
(12:13):
practically it means that feeds that are low in protein,
things like fodderbeat swedes or low quality pasture again back
to that quality thing should not be used in news
carrying twins or triplets in about that month leading up
to lamming. It's actually really quite significant in terms of
lamb losses, Yes.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
And amazing. Our statistics coming through out of that study
as well and relating to that are really good. Tip
for that one, thanks David. Look what breaks the system?
What are some of the things we don't plan for
and how do they impact this system?
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Yeah, it's really important. Some of the times that stuff
we don't plan for, but some of the themes, it's
the stuff that we haven't planned for as well. So
winter feedgiffersits are an obvious thing that we've always got
out here. But sometimes we will go, oh, well, we'll
have nearly enough and that will be fine.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yeah, she'll be right this.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
She'll be right attitude and it's possibly not doing us
a lot of favors in this space. Yeah, but when
things get really bad. When they get really bad is
the sudden changes of feed, especially in that last trimester
of pregnancy. So in the south, that might be a
snowfall at the wrong time that stays around for ten days.
It could be a really wet winter when everything turns
(13:32):
to mud and therefore the animals don't get the diet
that they need. It could be just as simple as
running out of feed and hoping for the best and
saying well, Oh yeah, we'll hope for a warm late
winter early spring. And the other one it could be
is actually changing the diet from one feed to another.
(13:53):
So even though I say we need high quality feed
in that last month, it can't be a sudden transition.
If it's a sudden transition, it's almost as bad as
starving the animal because the animal doesn't have the microbes in.
It's got to digest the new diet. So all of
those things you have to look out for, and then
(14:16):
you have to be quite proactive in managing those sort
of things. Again, if you've got a snowfall that might
hang around for ten or fourteen days, go out and
feed the animal. Something else. If you've got a really
wet winter when things are turning to mud, change the
way you manage your sheep so that you can reduce
the amount of mud. And we'll talk a little bit
about that later.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Yeah, how else, and what can people actually do? What
else can they do to break the system intentionally to
change things and make improvements to their system.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Well, like I said, well at the start, I've spent
forty years listening to farmers about how they do this stuff.
So the very first disclaimer here is These are not
all my ideas. These are everybody's ideas.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
But that's what makes them wonderful. You've had forty years
of absorbing things to try and needle out some of
the better ones.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Yeah, that's that's the opportunity to pass those on to others.
Even even look at Andrilla's work, the top thirty of farmers,
we're only bending about an extra two percent of total
feed requirement, right, that's not very much. No, give you
(15:32):
a thirty five percent increase in your gross margin. So
so so what are we What are we going to
do well? We need to have some tools to make
sure that we're on track. And as I said before,
live weight is really important because if you undefeed an
(15:53):
animal they will meet that live weight target eventually, they
will lose weight until they get there. So you have
to know what you're live weight of Your us are
at around about tupping time in a condition score of
three and a half. That's what you need to know.
We had a classic example of a farmer in Southland
who was a brilliant feed budgeter. He knew he had GPS,
(16:18):
the size was paddacks, he had all the gear to
do all of the feed allowances, figure out how much
pastures offer on offer and everything else. And we asked
him what the weight of his sheep were and he
told us that they were sixty five kilos. And he said, well,
where'd you get that number? Do you wear your sheep?
And he said, no, that's the number that they use
(16:38):
at the monitor farm down the road, So I've used
that number. We raided his sheep for him at mating
and they were seventy two kilos.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
And his he always said, I don't know. I feed
them according to the budget, and they always lose weight
in late winter. They always seem to lose weight. Well
that's because you was feeding them as though they were
sixty five kilos. Yeah, so that live weight is hugely
important to know how much to feed. So that's your
(17:12):
starting point. And then as the you changes over the
course of the season, she's going to grow a lamb
insider and grow some more wool or whatever else. That's
where body condition score comes in. You can put your
hand on the sheet and you can see whether or
not you are feeding enough. It's a reflection of your
(17:33):
stockmanship really, and it doesn't need to be hugely formal.
It just needs to be done so that you can
track whether you are going up or down. So condition
score change is really important. During the summer that they
should add weight because that's when you've got extra feed.
But in winter usually they go down. And one study
(17:59):
that we a farm in Southland showed that if we
lose a condition score over winter, new death rate goes
up by you can add another eight percent to that
five percent we were talking about. Wow, you can add
another five percent to the dry rate and overall that
is another twelve percent of lambs that don't turn up.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Yeah, so huge impact.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
There's huge impact. And all that you know, again, all
you're doing is going are we making sure that we
maintain the condition where it is? Yeah? So so there's
there's there's lots and lots of other options, other tips
(18:43):
and tricks. I suppose you'd almost call them.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Look, when you're looking at making changes
to your system, one thing you're going to look at
is the cost of it and the benefit and calculating
is it worth it?
Speaker 2 (18:59):
David, I think that comes to run of the options
that you have, and I'll always say buy feed in
if you have to. Every time we do the analysis,
the marginal return on. Adding more feed to a U
flock in late pregnancy is over a dollar a kilogram
(19:20):
dry matter. That's way above the purchase price, So that's
quite simple. Things like selling the use that might die
on you, for example, make decisions early in the autumn.
Have a look at the condition the low condition us
that haven't recovered properly over summer. It might be five
percent of your use. They will probably be in the
(19:42):
dead and missing category by the following spring, so sell
them while you still can't. That immediately eases up a
little bit of feed for you. Make sure that your
U flock's performing well before you made huggets. Otherwise you've
got too many priorities stock in winter and everything ends
up compromised. You know, some of those sort of things.
(20:04):
Sell lambs early if you don't think you're going to
have enough feed to get through winter, and you may
only ever have to do something like that once.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Yeah, yeah, bring yourself back on track.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Get yourself back on track. Ten percent of your lambs
on in May is around about the same as underfeeding
your U flock by about ten percent. We've done all
those numbers, so again, get them out of the system early.
And even if you have to make that sacrifice once
hopefully you'll reset the U flock. And then what happens
(20:37):
actually when you do reset the U flock is weaning
lights go up in the lambs and weaning numbers go
up because you're using more of your spring feed appropriately.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Yeah, I think they call that is it short term
pain for long term game?
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Exactly right, Because then what happens is winning weights are higher,
so you sell more lambs at weaning, you reduce your
feed demand the following summer and set yourself up for
the following winter. You know, simple stuff like that fetal
aging or ram harnesses, especially if you're trying to break
(21:14):
out of a system. What you want to do is
really carefully allocate feed to the right animals in late
winter and early spring. And you know, the extra twenty
or fifty cents a you that you pay for fetal
aging might be well worth it to make sure you
get that change the dynamic and spring and again that
(21:36):
short term cost versus a long term gain. Yeah. So
this sort like we were talking about mud in the winter.
It's a really interesting study that we did in Southland
about ten years ago where we changed using four day
shifts instead of daily shifts in winter, and what we
(21:59):
find is sheep calm down, they stop running around, they
stop trampling the feed in and actually you can start
to see you can recognize feed deficits because what happens
is if the us do start walking around on a
four day shift, then their feeder climents are probably not
being met. Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean. So
(22:22):
now you have a practical indicator, or again like condition
school was, now you've got a behavioral indicator from the
sheep that let you know whether or not you're feeding enough. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Does it something else to reinforce your decision making?
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So those those little tools help you
a lot. Probably one of the other thoughts in the
area is about shelter. We tend to go, oh, well,
we'll save all the sheltered paddics until landing, But actually
all the stuff that Julian's work did and our look
(22:58):
at this is actually the cold stress on the new
before lambing is probably really critical. So maybe maybe you
have to get some high quality feed on those and
give her access to those paddics a couple of weeks
out from landing, so that you take the stress off
the You and I think finally, if you really can't
(23:19):
find any ways to change feed supply in late pregnancy
and early e actation, didn't have a think about changing
your lambing date, put your lambing date back a little
bit later. Work that was done at Woodlands back in
the Wool showing the age now late eighties basically said
(23:39):
we could lamb on the first of August, the first
of September or the first of October, but by Christmas
time all those lambs were the same weight. Yeah, just
because of the synergies you get in making sure you
match feed supply and demand.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
I don't know if it's the same for sheep farmers,
but I know sometimes for dairy farmers in the North
Island it almost became a bit of a bragging thing.
We have carved early. We're the first to send away
a tank load of milk when actually you could have
pushed the carving back a weaver and matched when you
were carving with when that grass growth was a little
bit better than what you were doing.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Yeah, yeah, Yeas a week with commentary there, we worked
with Telford Very Farm for a little while and one
of the things that we did do was delay carving
by ten days. Yeah, and we make slightly more profit
doing it.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Well, yeah, it seems like it goes against everything. Yeah, yeah,
seems like it goes against everything you know and everything
you talk. But actually when you look at the science
behind it, it can be a really interesting move for
you to be able to try. Dr David Stevens, have
you got anything else you want to add for us
while I've got you as a captive audience on the line.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Well, I think back to those cost benefits, right, The
answer is that absolutely yes, it's it's well worth making
the change. So we just have to keep saying that.
And all those games come from more lands on the ground,
less replacements that are required, more used to sell later
in higher winning rates. They all go together as a package.
(25:16):
That's the important But we're actually a researchers invest in
quite heavily in this whole what's going on with new
mortality and morbidity. So hopefully this will be a watch
this space as we gain even more insight into what's
happening there. But if we go back to our original analysis,
(25:40):
the top thirty percent of the farmers are making thirty
five percent greater gross margin than the average for one
point eight percent more feed. It's that big an advantage.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Yeah, yeah, No, you've definitely taught me a lot today,
Doctor David Stevens. Seeing your scientists for agricultural Systems at Agrisearch.
I really appreciate your time, your experience. I'm not calling
you old. I'm saying you've got a bit of experience
in the field. It has been wonderful to chat to
you today. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
No, it's great to just be able to keep those
messages going out there. Farmers can do something about this
and it's not going to cost them a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Absolutely, and look for more information on Lamb Survival, head
to Beef Lamb in zed all one word Beef lambanzed
dot com forward slash Lamb Survival and we've got another
podcast coming out, episode two, joining you in a week's time.
Thanks so much for joining us today. Everyone, We'll see
you back in a week. Optimizing Lamb Survival with Beef
(26:48):
and Lamb New Zealand to Powered by the Country
Optimizing Lamb Survival with Beef and Lamb New Zealand to
Powered by the Country. Well, hello and welcome into an
all new podcast series here on the Country. We're looking
at optimizing Lamb Survival and association with Beef and Lamb
New Zealand. My name is Rowena Duncan, Rural lead at
enzed Me, and what I'm aiming to do across three
episodes is provide you with a bunch of practical advice
(00:24):
and proven strategies to help you lift lamb survival and
productivity on farm. Now, I won't be doing that on
my own. I'm a former dairy farmer, not much in
the way of experience at keeping lambs alive. But luckily
for you and for me, Beef and Lamb have got
us a bunch of experts to share their knowledge and experience,
not to mention practical on farm tactics to improve outcomes
(00:47):
from mating decisions and scanning right through the post weening care.
So later in the series we're going to be chatting
to Professor of Sheep Husbandry and Head of School of
Agriculture and Environment at Massive universitys Paul Kenyon, and also
Associate Professor Renee corner Thomas. But to kick us off
in this first episode, I'm fortunate today to be joined
(01:09):
by doctor David Stevens, Senior Scientists for Agricultural Systems at
AG Research. Hi, David, thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Hi, thanks for the invite. It's great to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
No, it is my absolute pleasure. Now tell us a
bit about your background, David. How did you get to
be the senior scientist for Agricultural Systems at AG Research.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, long story, being with EG Research and its predecessors
for about forty years now and started in Gore, which
gave me huge exposure to the sheep industry down there.
So I've had a very long career working alongside farmers.
(01:52):
And obviously the whole idea of lamb survival is absolutely
critical too farm profitability, so we'll talk a little bit
about that, but really what we want to talk about today,
the important part in that is feed planning and how
the you is pervotal in the success of your lambing. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Absolutely, So let's get underway and look at I guess
we could start with the national impacts of the you
on lamb survival. Is it the lamb or the you?
What are your thoughts on this, David, We.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Can look at from different angles. Firstly, that impact at
the national level gives an idea of the size of
the price and our general estimates overall as lamb losses
are somewhere between twenty and thirty percent of the lambs born.
Now that's a big range and it's quite high level.
(02:55):
And one of the reasons for that sort of high
level look is that we really don't get a good
data set at a national scale of scanning and docking data.
It's actually quite hard to find, whereas if you look
at the research studies, what you'll find is that land
losses are much lower than that when people are looking
(03:17):
really hard at it, and somewhere between five and thirteen
percent have been recorded in various trials around New Zealand
at the research level. The interesting thing there that that
puts a huge gap between best practice and current practice.
What that suggests is there are opportunities to change that metric.
(03:41):
Sort of The second part of that becomes what's actually
driving the problem of lamb losses, and quite a pivotal
study was done by Jillian River at Hanks and New
colleagues at a research Invermay back in the mid two thousands,
and the really important bit that came out of that
stuff was the role of the you in those losses.
(04:05):
And interestingly, the conditions that you was exposed to before
she lambed was actually two to three times more important
than the conditions at the time of the birth of
the lamb. So all we have is we have farmers going, oh, yeah,
the weather's really shit at lambing, and that's the problem. Actually,
(04:27):
it's probably the bad weather before lambing that's the real problem.
So the factor is in near the cold stress on
the U leading up to lambing, and then the maternal
behavior of the U around lambing. So that you is
really important in this whole process.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
So the next question in that is can we decide
to find the size of the opportunity for the farmers?
And and Ridler and her team at Massi University, of
which Renee Corner Thomas is one of your future speakers,
they did a nationwide study a couple of years ago
of thirty four farms and looked at how many US
(05:09):
died and how many US didn't rear lambs. And so
that's mortality and morbidity are the two terms technical terms. Now,
that study is absolutely stunning in terms of what we get.
We analyzed ance numbers and we see that the potential
number of us dying every year is five point five percent.
(05:30):
That's written in there, and that's reasonably well understood in
the industry three to five percent. Everybody tries to use
the three number. But that's eight hundred and fifty thousand
US that die each year.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
That's a lot.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
But interestingly, following Julia at Hank's example, the morbidity or
the use not wearing lambs actually adds another two point
two million news who are unproductive. That's a lot.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Yeah, yeah, it definitely adds up, especially when you're looking
at the scale of the farm that this may be
occurring on as well. That's a lot of wing stage. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
So the number that Anne reported with scanning presents one
hundred and eighty four. When we account for triplets, it's
five and a half million lambs going missing. Wow. And
it's around about twenty percent of our lambs going missing
just because the you dies or she doesn't lamb. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yeah, I just honestly, these figures are amazing.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
It is quite phenomenal. Like I say, this is a
brilliant study which has given us the opportunity to put
that in context. So we slaught her about eighteen million
lambs a year and we're talking about five and a
half million going missing. So it's really important.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Yeah, and definitely room for improvement, which is I guess
what this series is really all about, David.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Can it be changed? Exactly?
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Right?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Again, we go back to Add's number and we just
have a look at the top thirty percent of farmers
in there. They're producing twenty five percent more lambs for
sale than the average number, So that's important. And then
when we convert that into a gross margin, they're improving
their profitability by about thirty five percent. Wow, so the
(07:33):
size of the price is enormous.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Yeah, yeah, it absolutely is. So let's look at the
nutrition side of things. So energy and protein, where do
these come from? And what I want to talk about
the nutrition dynamics within the year as well. What can
we look at here? How do we understand this side
of things?
Speaker 2 (07:57):
I suppose where we start is that the U gets
her her energy either from a diet and all of
a nutrition actually from a diet, or she can get
it from her own reserves, right, so she can mobilize fat,
she can extract protein out of her muscles, et cetera.
(08:18):
That's all. So if you have a seventy kilou and
use feeder as if she's a sixty five kilou, she
will end up being sixty five kilos, right, she will.
Only she can only perform the way her diet lets it.
So what farmers did a long time ago was they
(08:41):
balanced that out, and we still do it in the
beef industry. Sometimes we'll feed them a little bit less
so that the whole usable of fat, and sometimes we'll
feed them a little bit more so they put fat
on right, and that fits our pasture life for curves.
But what we we need to consider, if we go
back to Julie ever at Hanks work that those cold
(09:08):
stress leave it leading up to lambing, for example, right
right at that time, you've got a you that might
have two or three lambs insider, which actually take up
quite a lot of space. So that then means that
her potential intake is slightly limited when you as soon
as you start to limit total intake, then you have
to make sure that the feed quality is really high.
(09:30):
And in general we talk about the energy content of
the feet, so if you hasn't got a really high
energy diet, then she starts to use up her own fat,
and then that starts to most In the extreme circumstances,
you'll get various metabolic diseases around lambing. The other thing
(09:58):
here is that if a you ends up really hungry
in late pregnancy, then as soon as the lambs are born,
she has this tendency to wander off and give feed,
and then that's where maternal behavior kicks in. Right, So
Julie's study talked about energy requirements leading up to lambing
and then maternal behavior around lambing as being the most
(10:19):
important things. So the practical outcomes are, we need high
quality feed at that time of the year. We're not
we shouldn't be trying to clean our pastures from last
summer or any of those sort of things. It has
to be freshly ground, new feed.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
So what about the protein side of the equation, David.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Protein's always been considered, but it hasn't really had much
of a focus. Energy fuels the process, but protein is
what builds the growing lamb inside the you. Right, So
energy is just the fuel. The protein is actually the
building block. So what we've seen with some recent study
(11:04):
by Supercords team that have researched grasslands has highlighted this
need for protein in the final stage of pregnancy. And
what they did was they fed fodderbet diets quite close
to lambing, and what they showed was that if protein
is short at that time, lamb loss is basically double.
(11:27):
So that's kind of significant. And when we have a
real look inside to you at the metabolism of that you,
it shows that the you is using really high levels
of her own fat and some of our own protein
to make sure that the growing lamb continues to grow. Basically, however,
(11:51):
she can't substitute everything for that lack in the diet.
So this is a much more in depth study than
the work that Julie and her Tein did earlier on,
but it actually starts to point to some of the
underlying causes of what's going on in this process. So
(12:13):
practically it means that feeds that are low in protein,
things like fodderbeat swedes or low quality pasture again back
to that quality thing should not be used in news
carrying twins or triplets in about that month leading up
to lamming. It's actually really quite significant in terms of
lamb losses, Yes.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
And amazing. Our statistics coming through out of that study
as well and relating to that are really good. Tip
for that one, thanks David. Look what breaks the system?
What are some of the things we don't plan for
and how do they impact this system?
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Yeah, it's really important. Some of the times that stuff
we don't plan for, but some of the themes, it's
the stuff that we haven't planned for as well. So
winter feedgiffersits are an obvious thing that we've always got
out here. But sometimes we will go, oh, well, we'll
have nearly enough and that will be fine.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yeah, she'll be right this.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
She'll be right attitude and it's possibly not doing us
a lot of favors in this space. Yeah, but when
things get really bad. When they get really bad is
the sudden changes of feed, especially in that last trimester
of pregnancy. So in the south, that might be a
snowfall at the wrong time that stays around for ten days.
It could be a really wet winter when everything turns
(13:32):
to mud and therefore the animals don't get the diet
that they need. It could be just as simple as
running out of feed and hoping for the best and
saying well, Oh yeah, we'll hope for a warm late
winter early spring. And the other one it could be
is actually changing the diet from one feed to another.
(13:53):
So even though I say we need high quality feed
in that last month, it can't be a sudden transition.
If it's a sudden transition, it's almost as bad as
starving the animal because the animal doesn't have the microbes in.
It's got to digest the new diet. So all of
those things you have to look out for, and then
(14:16):
you have to be quite proactive in managing those sort
of things. Again, if you've got a snowfall that might
hang around for ten or fourteen days, go out and
feed the animal. Something else. If you've got a really
wet winter when things are turning to mud, change the
way you manage your sheep so that you can reduce
the amount of mud. And we'll talk a little bit
about that later.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Yeah, how else, and what can people actually do? What
else can they do to break the system intentionally to
change things and make improvements to their system.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Well, like I said, well at the start, I've spent
forty years listening to farmers about how they do this stuff.
So the very first disclaimer here is These are not
all my ideas. These are everybody's ideas.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
But that's what makes them wonderful. You've had forty years
of absorbing things to try and needle out some of
the better ones.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Yeah, that's that's the opportunity to pass those on to others.
Even even look at Andrilla's work, the top thirty of farmers,
we're only bending about an extra two percent of total
feed requirement, right, that's not very much. No, give you
(15:32):
a thirty five percent increase in your gross margin. So
so so what are we What are we going to
do well? We need to have some tools to make
sure that we're on track. And as I said before,
live weight is really important because if you undefeed an
(15:53):
animal they will meet that live weight target eventually, they
will lose weight until they get there. So you have
to know what you're live weight of Your us are
at around about tupping time in a condition score of
three and a half. That's what you need to know.
We had a classic example of a farmer in Southland
who was a brilliant feed budgeter. He knew he had GPS,
(16:18):
the size was paddacks, he had all the gear to
do all of the feed allowances, figure out how much
pastures offer on offer and everything else. And we asked
him what the weight of his sheep were and he
told us that they were sixty five kilos. And he said, well,
where'd you get that number? Do you wear your sheep?
And he said, no, that's the number that they use
(16:38):
at the monitor farm down the road, So I've used
that number. We raided his sheep for him at mating
and they were seventy two kilos.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
And his he always said, I don't know. I feed
them according to the budget, and they always lose weight
in late winter. They always seem to lose weight. Well
that's because you was feeding them as though they were
sixty five kilos. Yeah, so that live weight is hugely
important to know how much to feed. So that's your
(17:12):
starting point. And then as the you changes over the
course of the season, she's going to grow a lamb
insider and grow some more wool or whatever else. That's
where body condition score comes in. You can put your
hand on the sheet and you can see whether or
not you are feeding enough. It's a reflection of your
(17:33):
stockmanship really, and it doesn't need to be hugely formal.
It just needs to be done so that you can
track whether you are going up or down. So condition
score change is really important. During the summer that they
should add weight because that's when you've got extra feed.
But in winter usually they go down. And one study
(17:59):
that we a farm in Southland showed that if we
lose a condition score over winter, new death rate goes
up by you can add another eight percent to that
five percent we were talking about. Wow, you can add
another five percent to the dry rate and overall that
is another twelve percent of lambs that don't turn up.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Yeah, so huge impact.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
There's huge impact. And all that you know, again, all
you're doing is going are we making sure that we
maintain the condition where it is? Yeah? So so there's
there's there's lots and lots of other options, other tips
(18:43):
and tricks. I suppose you'd almost call them.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Look, when you're looking at making changes
to your system, one thing you're going to look at
is the cost of it and the benefit and calculating
is it worth it?
Speaker 2 (18:59):
David, I think that comes to run of the options
that you have, and I'll always say buy feed in
if you have to. Every time we do the analysis,
the marginal return on. Adding more feed to a U
flock in late pregnancy is over a dollar a kilogram
(19:20):
dry matter. That's way above the purchase price, So that's
quite simple. Things like selling the use that might die
on you, for example, make decisions early in the autumn.
Have a look at the condition the low condition us
that haven't recovered properly over summer. It might be five
percent of your use. They will probably be in the
(19:42):
dead and missing category by the following spring, so sell
them while you still can't. That immediately eases up a
little bit of feed for you. Make sure that your
U flock's performing well before you made huggets. Otherwise you've
got too many priorities stock in winter and everything ends
up compromised. You know, some of those sort of things.
(20:04):
Sell lambs early if you don't think you're going to
have enough feed to get through winter, and you may
only ever have to do something like that once.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Yeah, yeah, bring yourself back on track.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Get yourself back on track. Ten percent of your lambs
on in May is around about the same as underfeeding
your U flock by about ten percent. We've done all
those numbers, so again, get them out of the system early.
And even if you have to make that sacrifice once
hopefully you'll reset the U flock. And then what happens
(20:37):
actually when you do reset the U flock is weaning
lights go up in the lambs and weaning numbers go
up because you're using more of your spring feed appropriately.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Yeah, I think they call that is it short term
pain for long term game?
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Exactly right, Because then what happens is winning weights are higher,
so you sell more lambs at weaning, you reduce your
feed demand the following summer and set yourself up for
the following winter. You know, simple stuff like that fetal
aging or ram harnesses, especially if you're trying to break
(21:14):
out of a system. What you want to do is
really carefully allocate feed to the right animals in late
winter and early spring. And you know, the extra twenty
or fifty cents a you that you pay for fetal
aging might be well worth it to make sure you
get that change the dynamic and spring and again that
(21:36):
short term cost versus a long term gain. Yeah. So
this sort like we were talking about mud in the winter.
It's a really interesting study that we did in Southland
about ten years ago where we changed using four day
shifts instead of daily shifts in winter, and what we
(21:59):
find is sheep calm down, they stop running around, they
stop trampling the feed in and actually you can start
to see you can recognize feed deficits because what happens
is if the us do start walking around on a
four day shift, then their feeder climents are probably not
being met. Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean. So
(22:22):
now you have a practical indicator, or again like condition
school was, now you've got a behavioral indicator from the
sheep that let you know whether or not you're feeding enough. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Does it something else to reinforce your decision making?
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So those those little tools help you
a lot. Probably one of the other thoughts in the
area is about shelter. We tend to go, oh, well,
we'll save all the sheltered paddics until landing, But actually
all the stuff that Julian's work did and our look
(22:58):
at this is actually the cold stress on the new
before lambing is probably really critical. So maybe maybe you
have to get some high quality feed on those and
give her access to those paddics a couple of weeks
out from landing, so that you take the stress off
the You and I think finally, if you really can't
(23:19):
find any ways to change feed supply in late pregnancy
and early e actation, didn't have a think about changing
your lambing date, put your lambing date back a little
bit later. Work that was done at Woodlands back in
the Wool showing the age now late eighties basically said
(23:39):
we could lamb on the first of August, the first
of September or the first of October, but by Christmas
time all those lambs were the same weight. Yeah, just
because of the synergies you get in making sure you
match feed supply and demand.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
I don't know if it's the same for sheep farmers,
but I know sometimes for dairy farmers in the North
Island it almost became a bit of a bragging thing.
We have carved early. We're the first to send away
a tank load of milk when actually you could have
pushed the carving back a weaver and matched when you
were carving with when that grass growth was a little
bit better than what you were doing.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Yeah, yeah, Yeas a week with commentary there, we worked
with Telford Very Farm for a little while and one
of the things that we did do was delay carving
by ten days. Yeah, and we make slightly more profit
doing it.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Well, yeah, it seems like it goes against everything. Yeah, yeah,
seems like it goes against everything you know and everything
you talk. But actually when you look at the science
behind it, it can be a really interesting move for
you to be able to try. Dr David Stevens, have
you got anything else you want to add for us
while I've got you as a captive audience on the line.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Well, I think back to those cost benefits, right, The
answer is that absolutely yes, it's it's well worth making
the change. So we just have to keep saying that.
And all those games come from more lands on the ground,
less replacements that are required, more used to sell later
in higher winning rates. They all go together as a package.
(25:16):
That's the important But we're actually a researchers invest in
quite heavily in this whole what's going on with new
mortality and morbidity. So hopefully this will be a watch
this space as we gain even more insight into what's
happening there. But if we go back to our original analysis,
(25:40):
the top thirty percent of the farmers are making thirty
five percent greater gross margin than the average for one
point eight percent more feed. It's that big an advantage.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Yeah, yeah, No, you've definitely taught me a lot today,
Doctor David Stevens. Seeing your scientists for agricultural Systems at Agrisearch.
I really appreciate your time, your experience. I'm not calling
you old. I'm saying you've got a bit of experience
in the field. It has been wonderful to chat to
you today. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
No, it's great to just be able to keep those
messages going out there. Farmers can do something about this
and it's not going to cost them a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Absolutely, and look for more information on Lamb Survival, head
to Beef Lamb in zed all one word Beef lambanzed
dot com forward slash Lamb Survival and we've got another
podcast coming out, episode two, joining you in a week's time.
Thanks so much for joining us today. Everyone, We'll see
you back in a week. Optimizing Lamb Survival with Beef
(26:48):
and Lamb New Zealand to Powered by the Country
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