Tyrrellspass couple host IGA farm walk

This year's Irish Grassland Association Sheep Conference and Farm Walk comes to Mullingar and Tyrrellspass.The farm walk is on the farm of Gordon and Yvonne Johnston, Tyrrellspass, and the conference is at Bloomfield House Hotel, on Tuesday May 22.Gordon and Yvonne are active members of the IGA, are also involved in Sheep Ireland Breed Improvement Programmes and are members of the Offaly Lamb Producer Group.Farming activities on the farm have changed markedly over the last decade. The construction of the M6 split the main block of farm land in two. Prior to this farming enterprises included a 50-cow suckler herd and a flock of 200 ewes.The new road disrupted farm infrastructure and made running of the suckler herd increasingly difficult; they decided to concentrate on sheep, and sheep numbers increased to approximately 500 head.This can be broken down into a commercial flock of 450 ewes and a flock of 50 pedigree Vendeen ewes.Breeding in the commercial flock has also developed during this timeframe into Lleyn cross Texel ewes. Performance of the flock is impressive, with mature ewes this year scanning about 2.1 lambs per ewe and turned out to grass with approximately 1.9 lambs per ewe.Grassland management and feeding ewes correctly is high on the agenda. Last year the weaning rate was over 1.5 lambs per ewe, including ewe lambs.Strong performance on the farm can be attributed to attention to detail and doing the simple things right. Ewes are lambed in three groups to spread workload and make best possible use of available housing. Two groups of 160 ewes are lambed on February 25 and March 13, followed by a group of ewe lambs and two-year-old hoggets at the beginning of April. Pedigree ewes are lambed in December.Ewe lambs are bred to increase output and also reduce the costs of retaining these animals idle over the winter. Breeding ewe lambs allows a closed flock to be maintained. Hogget ewes that rear twin lambs as yearlings are also held back to lamb with this flock. This gives these animals more time to recover and is proving beneficial in increasing the lambing percentage.Grassland managementThe stocking rate on the farm is just shy of 10 ewes per hectare, which is well above the average sheep flock. Land type is good, although the clay soil nature of the soil means land can become wet with heavy or prolonged rainfall.The aim with grassland management is to maintain high quality grass at all times by keeping supply slightly ahead of demand. The Johnstons are among a small number of sheep farmers measuring grass. Fertiliser usage is also targeted to maintain grass supply and quality. Lamb performance at grass is good with all lambs from adult ewes finished off grass. Hoggets lambs and stragglers are fed meal from late September.The farm is unique in that it differs from conventional systems with no silage saved. Instead, Gordon and Yvonne save up grass going into the winter for use in the Knockbeg system to feed ewes for November and December and into January.This is working excellently and has cut the workload associated with housing ewes earlier. Ewes are then housed on concentrates and straw. There are a number of benefits to this system: workload is reduced, feed quality is more predictable than silage and ewe performance can be closely monitored.These matters and many other points of interest will be discussed on May 22 - see www.irishgrassland.com for more.