More triplets and twins as early start and good pasture result in bumper lambing season for WA growers

An early break and abundance of green feed has set the scene for a good lambing season, with an abundance of twins and triplets being born across the State.

Lambing percentages are looking promising as healthy ewes — which have enjoyed months of green feed — are well positioned to look after their lambs and birthing them onto green pasture.

WAFarmers vice-president Steve McGuire’s lambs came down in a “splash” this year, with more triplets than usual.

The Kojonup farmer has 4000 Merino ewes lambing, half mated to Merinos and the other half to British Breed.

“Lambing’s been good,” Mr McGuire said. “We’ve had an early break to the season so they’re lambing on green feed and the ewes are in very good condition. We’ve had a small issue with some of the single cross-bred lambs being a bit big. But we’re getting reasonably good survivability in our multiples so that helps the lambing percentage.

“Our flock’s quite young, so when a third of your ewes are maidens and having their first lamb that can be quite a challenge to get your lambing percentage up but we seem to have achieved that.”

And there are more lambs dropping than usual, with the ewes mothering well. “We’ve definitely had a lot more triplets than normal and they’re actually keeping them alive as well,” Mr McGuire said.

“That’s the issue with multiples. It’s A, to get multiple lambs and B, to keep the multiples alive.

I’d say there’s no doubt Merino ewes are no good at counting — but I think the better condition they are in, the better they count.

Mr McGuire is taking a hands-on approach to lambing, checking his flock regularly to ensure they are not having birthing issues and improving the survivability of ewes and lambs.

“We don’t have as many ewes as we used to so we’ve got the labour to do it,” he said.

“We’ve saved some ewes... they’re worth money.”

In turn, He has also found himself a doting dad father to five pet lambs , including Mabel (pictured).

The industry advocate said growers needed to continually work on improving lamb survivability, to improve the wool industry’s competitiveness in the market.

He said survivability becoming a target for animal activists was also a concern.

“We can’t be sitting on our hands with survivability, we need to be working on that and getting practical, farm-level solutions,” he said.

The Merino industry, if it wants to continue, it needs to get better lamb survivability. For wool to hold its own against sheep meat and grain, it’s got to be profitable and we need productivity, and lambs on the ground is an important part of it.

He said lambing ewes on a model of 100 was not practical for most commercial sheep farmers, so other alternatives like virtual fencing needed to be researched and applied at farm scale.

“Something I haven’t done yet but really want to get into is a bit of crop grazing — getting a bit of crop in early and then getting some sheep on it.”