Valuable farm information may be walking off your farm every year.
This spring Barry and Julie Crawford are expecting around 7000 lambs to arrive on their Gore property, Rosebank. All going well the lambs will be gone in six months.
But gone won’t mean forgotten. Barry and Julie collect information about the lambs while they’re at Rosebank – and that provides a really useful historical record, they say.
They see every farming season as an opportunity to learn. So they keep good records about how the ewes were managed, what animal health treatments they’ve been given, when the lambs were weaned, lamb weights over time and what they were fed. They can then analyse this information at any time in future.
The Crawfords did a lot of work on their genetics some years ago, so their main focus at the moment is assessing what forages are good for lamb growth.
By matching forages against how the lambs performed – as shown by liveweights, growth rates and their carcass grading – they can see what’s working well. They’ve been getting good results from red clover, for example.
Of course, not every season is the same -but seeing how things panned out over previous years gives a good starting point, Barry and Julie say. Looking at comparisons against how the lambs went last year and years before can also give a good measure on how the current year is tracking. It might alert you early to something that’s happening. Last season, for example, the Crawfords started to notice the impact of clover root weevil on some Rosebank paddocks.
These days there is electronic technology that can help you easily capture information about your lambs - and any other aspect of your farm, Julie points out. “It’s so easy to use, and it’s a good investment. I know farmers who’ll spend $100,000 or more on a new tractor but won’t spend anything on farm information recording to get a better handle on what’s happening on their farm. You can start with the basic indicator box and work your way from there.
“Once you get going, you can set up targets and measure against them, which is really helpful for predicting when mobs are going to be ready for the truck,” she says. And when the time comes she and Barry will be happy to wave them off – knowing they’re leaving a rich record behind!
To get more information on lamb recording for your farm check out the FarmIQ System.
