Field Margins: Rachel Young talks roguing and weaning

The rain is extremely welcome for our grass which has had poor growth due to the dry weather in April and May followed by some extreme heat in June. Although good for the grass, the unsettled weather did make getting our ewes clipped difficult, but we finally managed to get them done on the third attempt gathering them.

One ewe jumped out of the race, so I decided a few days later to catch her and clip her myself using the battery shears and it gave me a new found admiration and gratitude for shearers. I’ve never sheared a whole sheep before, only clipped tails and backsides, and I felt near collapse after doing just one, and doing it very badly at that!

Rachel has weaned lambs earlier at 12 and 10-weeks of age

We weaned our oldest lambs at 12 weeks sharp, which is a little on the early side for us, with weaning usually being around 14 weeks. We're happy enough though with an average weaned weight of 34kg.

We were then forced to wean the rest of the lambs at around 10 weeks as the mob of ewes and lambs run on the rotational grazing system was too big considering the poor grass growth. Paddocks were becoming overgrazed, ewes started to look thin and lamb growth rates had stalled. The ones weaned at 10 weeks produced an average weight of 30.5kg, which is disappointing but not surprising.

Lambs have been grouped now by weight and anything over 32kg at weaning put on creep feed and moved onto good pasture. Hopefully we'll get our first draw of prime lambs away this week, with our aim being to get rid of a good chunk of the lambs fat in August and early September freeing up grass for flushing and tupping in late September and October.

The lighter lambs will be kept until the late autumn and moved onto turnips for fattening in November.

Unfortunately, early weaning seems to have caused a few cases of mastitis, with three ewes presenting with various stages in the 10 days post weaning.

On the arable front, our spring barley crops look mixed with anything on very light land having dried out in May and June, with the rain coming too late to save it. Hopefully we'll get a bit of sunshine now to boost the yield in the crops which do look more promising.

The earliest fields of oilseed rape will be sprayed off over the next few days, so hopefully the weather improves for a nice sunny and dry harvest, fingers crossed!

Rachel Young has had a busy month speaning lambs, shearing a single sheep and roguing

Aside from sheep work the last month we have been mucking out and power washing sheds ahead of harvests, roguing seed wheat and seed spring barley crops for inspections later this week. Dad seems to be constantly spraying either carrots or cereals.

All the seed barley crops received a wild oat spray so it is just wee bits around poles or on outskirts of fields that have anything in them.

As a child and teenager I despised being forced to go roguing in the summer holidays, but now it is one of my favourite jobs to do, as long as it is not too hot or raining and there aren’t bags and bags of weeds to pull! Low stress, no one asking questions, no one to supervise, just enjoy the sea views and the sounds of the birds and insects of the farm – bliss!