Sheep Ireland Board Meeting Thursday 19th January

The next meeting of the Sheep Ireland Board takes place next week. As usual we encourage anyone with queries, suggestions or issues to contact the relevant Board member that represents your interests in advance of the meeting. A full list of Board members can be found on the Sheep Ireland website or by clicking here. In next week’s update we will detail the topics discussed at the meeting.

Events for the Calendar

The annual Teagasc sheep conferences are coming up soon. There will be three conferences in total, with one concentrating on the hill sheep sector. View the latest Teagasc sheep newsletter here for full details on the events. These conferences are a must for all sheep farmers.

Preparation for CPT Lambing 2017

The lead in to CPT lambing has already begun and the biggest challenge each year is locating an adequate amount of labour to help with this intense period of lambing. Using AI helps to condense the lambing period and essentially eliminate the effects that things like climate can have on lamb performance in early life. When lambs are all born in a tight window, they are exposed to the same conditions, which greatly aids our ability to evaluate and compare their performance fairly.

Lambing Experience Available

• Each year a number of students join us for the CPT lambing window to gain experience and none have been disappointed to date. With up to 100 ewes lambing down in a single 24 hour period on individual farms, there is certainly plenty of action and a huge amount of learning is condensed into a very short period. Of course there is also a lot of data recording to do and these skills are extremely useful too, especially for anyone hoping to pursue a career in the livestock industry, as data recording continues to become an integral part of the Irish agri industry.
• Anyone interested in gaining some experience can contact us on 1850 601 901 or by email at [email protected]. The lambing period across our 5 CPT flocks takes place for the duration of March.