SHARING OPTIONS:
The focus in the flocks is to utilise green grazing or in-bye land at key time frames, while maximising the duration of time ewes spend on hill grazing.
Nearly all of the Teagasc BETTER Farm hill sheep flocks have finished pregnancy scanning in the past couple of weeks and overall the scanning rates and litter sizes are quite good, as presented in Table 1.
Pregnancy scanning is a very important management tool for all sheep farmers and this is the case for hill sheep farmers as much as lowland sheep farmers.
By knowing the litter size, it allows for singles and twins to be divided and managed separately, but it also can identify problems with pregnancy rates, particularly if the problem occurs over a number of years.