StayDry Pre Drop™ increases lambing percentages in extreme cold

Running a high elevation property near Cooma in NSW, one of the key challenges for farmer SimonKing is dealing with cold weatherat lambing time for his 1500merino ewes.

Lambing takes place in the last week of August and through Septemberon ‘Muniong’. While the property can receive snow at that time of the year, Simon times lambingthen for a number of reasons.

“We want to get lambs on the ground and lamb marking done before there’s much of a fly issue, or problems with grass-seed heading into summer. It meanswe’re weaning those lambs around January, when hopefully at this elevation we’ve still got some green feed,” he explains.

The challenge then becomes how to manage the cold weatherand limited feed at that time of the year.

“Survival rates for lambing are a majorprofit driver, giving you more surplusstock to sell and enables you to putmore selection pressure on your flock to enable improvement,” he explains.

“We identified a number of ewes that were consistently lambing but then losing those lambs, and so being able to identify those ewes has been a hugefactor.”

“Just those first few hours at birth are critical to lambsurvivability, especially with the climaticconstraints we have at thisaltitude of snow and wind-chill, and the feed requirements.”

“Our main management strategies are tomeet energy requirements through supplementary feeding, making sure that we give ewes every opportunity to get that lamb out and up, and being fed with a tummy full of colostrum.”

In 2017 Simon was asked by a Grow Livestock Agronomist to trial StayDryPre Drop, a nutritional lick powder supplement designed to reduce birth difficultiesin maidens, optimise immune system function and improve colostrumquality, all of which combines to increase survival and growth rates inoffspring.

The trial included about 400 ewes and was set up to keep as many factors as possibleconsistent, with all the ewesfed the same rate of supplementary feed. One group was established as a controlwithout any StayDry Pre Drop supplement and the other groups were set up with StayDry Pre Drop supplement. Theproduction measure was the difference in lamb survivalfrom scanning to marking.

The dose rate of StayDry Pre Drop was 300 grams per head fed out over a period of 30 days leading up to lambing.

Over a six-week lambing period, the two mobs supplemented withStayDry Pre Drop showed an increase in lamb survivability of 19% and 23%.

“I find it critical to be able to work with the Grow Livestock Agronomist as partof a complete programme.”

“We found that StayDry Pre Drop produced an enormously significant increase in lamb survivabilitywithin those groups,” Simon says.

“I was surprised, it just proved to me the worth of setting everything up with the StayDry PreDrop loading product, making sure all those vitamins and minerals were there to producethe colostrum, to get those ewesto lamb quickly, but also get the lambs up and into that first drink of milk, that obviouslyaided lamb survivability in cold conditions.”

Simon says the equation is very simple for his business - extralambs transfer directly to extra profit, and in that regard, the StayDry PreDrop on-farm trial was a success.

“To give 300 grams of StayDryPre Drop costs around

$1.70 per head and to put a figure of $30 on a new born lamb,you would only need roughlyfive and a halfextra lambs per 100 ewes to get a return on investment,” he says.

Being a fixeddose loading product,Simon reports he alsofound StayDry Pre Drop easy to use, as he knewexactly how much he had to supply to the ewes in theperiod leading up to lambing.

The final piecein the puzzle for Simonhas been developinga relationship with the Grow LivestockAgronomist, who has helped with background knowledge and ongoingsupport.

“I find it critical to be able to work with the Grow LivestockAgronomist as part of a complete programme,it’s critical having someone that understands our production system andmaking sure that the nutritional products are right, particularly in such achallenging environment,” he says.

“We’ll certainly use the productagain this year and will continue to work with the Grow Livestock Agronomist to measure our lamb survivability improvements over time and transferthat into profit,” he says.

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