Keeping ewes fed and healthy with Dr Andrew Dowling

Keeping your ewes fed and healthy comes down to a balanced diet and maintaining Body Condition Score in late winter. Any loss in body condition impacts lamb survival, so getting the balance between protein and carbs right makes all the difference. PGG Wrightson Technical Expert for Animal Production, Dr Andrew Dowling, joins the conversation with advice on your winter-feeding system to maximise profits and productivity.

Episode Transcript

(00:10):
You're listening to my favouritepodcast for farmers and growers,
Blue Shed Diary, where we take adeep dive into the issues
important to the primary sector and get behind the gate advice
to help you and your farm thrive.
My name is Milton Monroe and your host and PG Wrights and
technical team manager. Each month we invite a member of
their technical team or technical reps to join us on the

(00:31):
podcast for Techtalk. This week, joining the
conversation is Doctor Andrew Dowling.
Pete, did you write some technical expert for animal
production? Veterinarian and the longest
serving member of the technical team, Andrew joins us today to
give us some pre Lam advice. Welcome to the show, Andrew.
Yep, nice to be chatting to yourMilton.

(00:52):
Ohh, great to have you here, Doctor Dee.
Right, let's talk about preparing news for lemming.
Now, having been to a number of your talks over the year, I know
it's all about, you know, a goodbalanced diet and maintaining
body condition score. But would you like to explain to
our listeners why that is so important?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Megan, I think we're going past

(01:15):
the days of just knowing we needto put enough say energy or feed
into the diet and we needed to be a bit more more scientific, a
bit more targeted and where the fee goes.
I mean, at the end of the day, yes, you do need enough energy
without the energy in your diet.We just playing around the
edges, but we do that pretty well.

(01:38):
In my 17 years at right since wefeed our stocks so much better
than we used to. That's been that.
It's been a game changer. Now we've found out ohh, by
playing with the diet you can actually do better.
So we've got the energy back at filled.
That's been great. The one we're missing is
protein. I protein is green stuff.

(02:02):
When you have got a U that's gottwo or three foetuses growing in
cider, or you've got a hogget that's trying to grow and grow
foetus, that requires a lot of protein to develop.
The the bone structure of the young sheep doesn't hogget for
the foetus to also develop to get enough bone structure for
its immune system development but general good health.

(02:26):
And then also for that you to produce you some high quality
good volumes of colostrum to gettheir lamb up and racing and
then produce milk into early lactation.
So protein is the bucket that we're now identifying as the
lacking one. It's not just energy.
So and their reps are great at their you can grow me an 18

(02:49):
tonne sweet crop and I go, well,that's cool.
But is that actually what your you needs?
Because when we grow our big crops, it's bulb, it's it's
carbohydrate. It shows it's good, yes, but
it's not protein. Um, so proteins are green leaf
on the top, which might be 1520%of the diet and we get a few
frost that knocks that back. So we've got to find a way of

(03:13):
plugging this protein into theirdiet, especially in the last six
weeks of pregnancy. Interesting.
So thinking, you know, very muchabout this year and the season
that our farmers find themselvesin.
And generally speaking across the country we've had a lot of
rain. So places that would that would
normally be pretty hard, pretty brown at this time of the year

(03:33):
are chock full of green pasture.Green pasture means protein.
So that that should solve all those requirements, right?
Yeah, it is good having that green pasture fills it.
Our autumn feed tends to be quite lush too.
So if you can chew through that pretty quickly.
So if you've got green feed, that's awesome.

(03:53):
And they're big target is we've got to make sure those use don't
lose body condition in their last six weeks because that can
cost you 10% of that use production for the year and
profitable profit wise it can cost you 6%.
Those two numbers are different because to put the protein in
comes at a cost. So we've got to make sure we

(04:13):
don't have them losing body condition or running out of
protein in that time. I'm also looking around at
farms. We've had quite a lot of growth
through the summer and autumn, so we've got a lot of ranked
pasture to clean up and that doesn't have a lot of protein in
it also doesn't have a lot of energy in it either.
So we've got to start getting into that stuff early in the
winter rather than trying to be still doing clean up work and

(04:36):
late pregnancy. So, so which use would you be
most worried about? I mean, you know, again, we we
tend to have an air, you know, and their flocks with we've got,
we'll have quite a variety of animals in there.
I mean, it's really the skinny ones, the older ones.
I mean, if you're scanning, Yeah, yeah.
You twins and your triplets, where would you be most
consumed? Right.

(04:56):
Yep, Yep, old youth. So you are your oldest group use
whether that's five year old, whatever age group that is in
your flock. Those are the most susceptible
to changes. And then it's your young ones.
So if you're lambing hoggets, hoggets, if it's two days, it's
todos and you'll cheat. Those are the two you've got to
target. First up, you've got to look

(05:18):
after them. The mixed ages are pretty good
at looking after themselves, buteven amongst them you do need to
put your hand on their back to condition score them because we
need to start managing them as in body condition groups rather
than just as a whole mob. And I'm sorry, you can't
condition score at the drafting gate unless you're actually

(05:38):
almost immediately off Shields or a month off.
She is and if you're winter shearing and leaving wool on
while then it's prelim and hard to see the condition of those
youth and we miss the easy targets.
Yes you get the really skinny use but you you miss the ones
that might be 3 or 4K off and yet they're quite an easy one.
We missed them and they then suffer.

(05:59):
So look, to anyone listening at the moment, I mean, you know,
you've you've mentioned, you know, body condition scoring
use. Now this is something look, I
mean is a plant scientist was a complete anathema to me.
But I do have to say you have managed to take this, this old
dog a couple of tricks. Having been through probably a
dozen of your training sessions around you condition scoring
origin, I'd almost be somewhat confident to give it a bit of a

(06:21):
nudge. But anyone listening, I mean,
what's kind of the principle here?
What do you actually need to do there?
Good body condition? Score you.
Yeah, and I'm motorway still teach you a few things.
It's good there's and that's a good thing and and I learned it
too. You don't need to be a special
person to condition score. You're cheap.
They're either skinny, they're OK or they're fat or they're

(06:43):
skinny or they're okay really. And they go through and putting
your hand on their back and now those little behind the ribs and
you're getting a feel for how much meat and and muscle as over
the back of that animal. And you're trying to target
those ones that are lighter thanthe rest or lower condition
score than the rest to be able to, to feed them beta.
Just drenching them and putting back in the mob doesn't help

(07:05):
them. They need to be preferentially
fed because these uses could be 10 or 15 kilos lighter than
their mates, right. And it's and say we talked about
earlier about how we're feeding our used better.
I say another issue, we're seeing Milton as our users are
so highly fecund. Yeah, we was scanning very high,
so I started to go the other way.
Where at the user and fat condition in the autumn we need

(07:30):
to start backing off feeding them because all we're doing is
loading up more lambs into them.And if you've only got enough
paddocks to spread out 3/4 of your use with multiples than
having 85% of them having multiples doesn't help you.
Yeah, we're trying to get him toland in countries like that
aren't suitable for them. So it works both ways.

(07:50):
It's about conserving feet of their own good condition.
We don't need to give them more,but if the light it's allocating
more feed to those ones. No back seats makes a lot of
sense, right? I always like to finish out, you
know, any of these interviews with a wee bit of a call for
action. What should our farmers do if
they're out there, they've got, they've got the sheep and the
yards. They do a little bit of body

(08:11):
condition scoring, put the hand on the back and they do think
they're a little bit like, what are their options?
Cause we're kind of running out a little bit of time.
But what could they be doing to to help put themselves in a
better position for the Sprint? Yeah, that's it.
You you've got until about ohh, the last last six weeks before,
yeah, within six weeks of lambing.

(08:33):
Feeding them more is not going to put condition on them.
So you got the window between now and then to actually better
feed those used better to get conditioned on them to improve
the survivability of the lamb. So that's what we can do at the
moment. Look at your feed budget, see
what's going on. The cardinal sin is running out
of grass at Leeming. We can't do that.

(08:53):
So you have to and you run a farm.
So you might have some light useand go, well if I preferentially
feed you the main use miss out, well that's not a good idea.
So we need to make those decisions early.
If you're a bit short on feedingand you've got a pretty good
idea in your farm how it's going, do you need to bring some
grain in? Do we bring some solid, some
other fade to help get your grass to go further?

(09:18):
Because we we desperately need that grass and we get down to
lambing. You want to do that.
And if you're sure to feed it Lammy, then you don't set stock
until they're about to lamb. Otherwise they just go out there
and they eat all that feed. So get in there, get a good
assessment of the feed you got on hand and the quality of it,
condition score those use so youknow what the demands of your

(09:41):
flock are. And then you're targeting the
feed to each group. And it sounds hard, but it's
not. It's not so hard.
And I think we're going to startgoing away from so much running
them and age groups as in condition score.
I want to give you a four tooth or a mixed day to you if you're
like you go on with them. Have you got some light use?
You can put them on with a todosbecause you're feeding them

(10:01):
better anyway. We don't need to overcomplicate
this. No, it's some fantastic ideas.
I mean, it's a real farm systemsapproach to, to trying to lift
that next level of production gains.
It's quite exciting, Andrew. It is.
And that's the skill of our farmers.
They're they're really good at managing stock and managing

(10:23):
feed, you know, and kudos to them, they're blaming good at
that. And so we just got to do more of
it and teaching our our young staff.
This is why we do things, you know there's money to be made
here by keeping those animals well fed and in good body
condition. Fantastic.
No, that sounds like a definite plan for the for the spring.

(10:45):
So encouraging all of our farmers.
If you if you don't know how to body condition score you're
you're you're use contact your local PGG rights and reps there
will be more than happy to give you a bit of a helping hand
here. Who knows, you might even get
Doctor Dowling to come out and give you a personal lesson.
Yeah, yeah, I love Captain Scones always going down.

(11:05):
Yeah, no, easily bribed this man.
I thank you very much for your time, Andrew.
Been a pleasure to have you on the show.
Okay Milton, you enjoy your day.Certainly will.
Thanks for listening to Blue Shield Diary.
Have a question you want answered in our next tick talk?
Just shoot us an e-mail at [e-mail] dot NZ.

(11:27):
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Until next time, my name is Milton Munroe, Doctor Tiano.