The Science of the lambs

It's coming up to Holly Farm's busy time. That's not surprising. The lambing season is getting underway throughout the country and over the next few weeks the number of warm bodies on farms will more than double. But Holly Farm in the hills behind Marton is no ordinary farm reports The Dom Post. It is a romney stud and the farmers, David and Maureen Smith and son Cameron, go to great pains to ensure they record every foible of their newborn lambs and their mothers. It is a marked contrast to other commercial sheep farms where farmers leave ewes to give birth undisturbed. The hill country is not a place for weaklings who need to be mollycoddled and long gone are the days when farmers acted as midwives to their flocks. But for the Smiths, record-keeping is paramount and the most important information is gleaned shortly after birth. It is the best way to discover which ewes and rams are performing well and which of their offspring are worth keeping to breed from. The best males are sold to hill- country farmers as producers of fertile, self-sufficient, fast-growing sheep. In a family tradition going back more than 120 years - Mr Smith has a cup awarded to his great-uncle, George Wheeler, in 1887 for a prize ram at the Manawatu and West Coast Agricultural and Pastoral Association show - they keep meticulous records and are able to trace their flock's bloodlines back to the English romneys of Mr Wheeler's Leedstown Stud. They are expecting a big lamb drop in a month's time. Scans show a 174 per cent pregnancy rate, with more than 100 ewes expecting triplets. The Smiths have concentrated on breeding strong survival traits into their sheep and confidently expect to record 150 per cent at docking, three weeks after lambing. This loss of about 13.5 per cent is well below the 20 per cent or more considered acceptable by hill country farmers and includes ewes that die with their lambs unborn. For the past three years, the loss of lambs alone has been 8.5 per cent, a result Mr Smith is pleased with. "We're higher and colder than most," he says. "The hills go to 370 metres and we're pretty exposed to the south and east." They are hoping for kind weather for lambing but know to expect the worst. Pasture levels are low after a harsh winter and they are hoping some warmth will come to stimulate grass growth. From mid-September, each day they will each take a motorbike and ride into the hills to where the ewes have settled for lambing. Multiple-lambers are visited twice a day. The aim is to be there within a few hours of birth to catch the lambs before they get too frisky to run away. Each lamb is slung up on a portable scale and weighed and tagged, its sex identified and any faults noted. Mr and Mrs Smith each carry a small hand-held tape- recorder and Cameron makes his notes on a palm pilot. Faults are mainly to do with the lamb's body and leg structure, but any black spots in the wool are also noted. The mother's ear tag number is taken and special note is made of her demeanour at seeing her lamb seized. It is important that she remain close by - an attentive mother is essential to lamb survival. The ewes that stay within one metre when their lambs are being checked are given a star by their numbers. One that runs away is marked for culling. Such is the rigour of the Smiths' breeding process that not only is she sent for slaughter but so are her lambs and any of her previous daughters still in the flock. Such ruthless efficiency is to stamp out any trace of poor mothering, an inheritable trait, and proof of its effectiveness is that such ewes are now seldom seen.