Lambing Rates: What Every Sheep Farmer Should Know

Lambing is one of the most exciting and crucial times of the year for sheep farmers. It's a time filled with anticipation, hard work, and, of course, cute new babies on the farm. One key factor that can make or break the success of your lambing season is understanding and managing your lambing rates. Ok, what exactly does that mean, and why is it important?

In this blog post, we'll explore everything a farmer should know about lambing rates and how improving them can lead to a more productive and profitable lambing season and ultimately a more productive farm.

What Are Lambing Rates?

Lambing rate refers to the number of lambs born per ewe over a particular breeding season. Its often refered to in a ratio, such as "2 lambs per ewe." This means that, each ewe produces that number of lambs during the season (on average). While it’s great to have high lambing rates, farmers must also consider factors such as ewe health, nutrition, and genetics, as they account for their lambing rates.

Lambing Rate Formula:

Lambing Rate=(Number of Lambs Born / Number of Ewes Exposed to Rams) × 100

Steps to Calculate Lambing Rate:

To get your lambing rate you'll need to collect some data like number of lambs born and number of ewes exposed to rams. Then you can caluclate your lambing rate.

1. Track the number of ewes exposed to rams. This is the total number of ewes that were bred during the breeding season.

2. Count the number of lambs born. Include both live and stillborn lambs.

3. Divide the total number of lambs born by the number of ewes that were exposed to rams, then multiply the result by 100 to get a percentage.

Why Are Lambing Rates Important?

Lambing rates can be an indicator of the health of your flock. For some sheep farmers, the higher the lambing rate, the more lambs they will have for sale or breeding. This can lead to increased income and better utilization of resources. For that same farmer, low lambing rates means fewer lambs, fewer lambs to sell, and greater costs per ewe.

Higher lambing rates are not necessarily better, though. It depends on what you are production goals. If you are raising sheep for wool, you may not want as many lambs. Since using a fleece from a pregnant ewe might have a wool break. (A wool break is a spot in the fleece from hormonal change and stress from pregnancy or nutrition, which may show up in their fleece, making it unusable.) For some sheep, this is not a problem, but for others, this may reduce the usability of their fleece.

Here are a few reasons why lambing rates may be important to a sheep operation:

1. Monitary goals:  A high lambing rate means more lambs to sell, whether for meat, wool, or lawn mowers. For operations that are looking to sell a lot of lambs, a higher rate of lambing translates to profit.

2. Farm efficiency: Improving lambing rates means you’re getting more out of each ewe, helping you maximize your farm's resources, such as feed, labor, and space.

3. Flock health:  Lambing rates have been closely tied to the health, wellness, and genetics of your flock. High lambing rates often correlate with a stronger, healthier flock that’s less susceptible to disease and malnutrition.

4. Breeding program success: 

   By tracking lambing rates, farmers can assess how well their breeding program is performing. If you’re not getting the lambs you expect, it may be time to review your breeding practices and stock.

Factors That Affect Lambing Rate and How to Improve Your Lambing Rates

A healthy flock is more likely to produce healthy lambs. Several factors influence lambing rates. Understanding and managing these elements is a sure way to improve your flock’s productivity. While some aspects of lambing rates are not in your control, there are steps you can take to improve your flock’s productivity.

1. Ewe are what you eat: 

   For starters, make sure that your ewes have adequete nutrition during their reproductive cycle, during pregnancy and into lactation. The better the nutrition they recive, the higher the chances of successfully mating, carrying to term, having strong healthy lambs, and taking care of them well.

   1. Body condition scoring (BCS): Body condition scoring ewes can help determine their nutritional and health status before breeding. Ewes that are too thin or too fat may have lower fertility rates and poorer lambing success. Aim to maintain a BCS between 2.5 and 3.5 on a 5-point scale. You can use Farmbrite to track BCS as well as health and wellness of your flock.

2. Choose your best and brightest: 

   Speaking of genetics, make sure to breed your best stock. You can choose to breed ewes and rams that are proven to produce higher lambing rates, vigorous lambs, and take care of their young. Choose ewes that are in that Goldilocks age, not too young but not too old.

3. Timing is everything:

   Ensure that your ewes are bred at the right time for optimal fertility. If you’re using AI, work with a skilled technician to time inseminations accurately. For natural mating, plan your breeding season carefully to avoid stress. Also, time giving lambs colostrum at the right time which help out lambs significantly.

4. Invest in health management:  A little TLC goes a long way. Healthy and disease-free rams and ewes give the lambs a healthy start. Regular vaccinations, deworming, and health checks can ease complications during pregnancy and lambing. Use good hygeine and have iodine or topical antibiotics when necessary for both mama and lambs.

5. Mama needs a vacation:  During lambing season, try to minimize stress on your ewes. This includes reducing overcrowding, not handling ewes or only in small amounts, providing quiet and comfortable shelter, and offering proper assistance during difficult births.

6. Track your success:  You can't monitor what you don't track. So, keep track of lambing rates from year to year, and look for any trends you find (good and bad). This will help you spot any issues early on, and you can adjust your sheep management practices as needed.

7. Be prepared: Make sure that you are prepared for lambing. Know the genstation dates and what you need to have on-hand when the ewe lambs. Make sure you are well-organized with a lambing plan where you have experienced staff on hand that can help with quick intervention if needed. That immediate help during lambing, such as interviening in difficult births, and providing a warm, dry space for newborn lambs (or watching to make sure the ewe has accepting the lamb and if not, drying that bottle baby off yourself), can drastically improve survival rates and healthy outcomes for your flock.

We all want healthy lambs and ewes. Having a plan from start to finish and tracking your success can help you be prepared and in control of the outcomes you get each season.

Key Performance Indicators For Sheep Farmers

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are essential tools for sheep farmers to measure and manage various aspects of flock health, productivity, and profitability.

Some other vital statistics and key performance indicators (KPIs) that sheep farmers might want to track:

• Number of ewes exposed

• Number of ewes that lambed

• Ewe fertility rate (Number of Ewes Lambing / Number of Ewes Exposed) × 100

• Lambing percentage (Total Number of Lambs Born / Number of Ewes Lambing) × 100

• Breeding success rate (Number of Ewes Pregnant / Number of Ewes Exposed) × 100

• Body condition score (BCS)

• Feed conversion ratio (Feed Intake / Weight Gain)

• Dates of first and last lambing

• Lambing interval (Time Between Consecutive Lambings)

• Number of live births

• Number of stillborn

• Mortality rate (Number of Deaths / Total Number of Lambs or Ewes) × 100

• Health of mother using BCS

• Did mother lamb well (Yes or No)

• Did mother take care of all of her lambs (percentage and percentage over time)

• Health of lambs

• The number of lambs raised on milk replacer

• Weaning rate (Number of Lambs Weaned / Number of Lambs Born) × 100

• Date weaned

• AVD (Average daily gain of lambs) (Weight Gain / Number of Days)

There are so many factors that go into the data on your farm and how that affects your bottom line. It's easy to get overwhelmed. You don't have to track all of the things in the above list right away, but it helps if you track the things that are important to you and your farm. Collecting and analyzing these KPIs (even if it's just a few of them) enables you to make informed decisions and continuously improve your flock management practices over time.

Lambing rates are a key performance indicator that every sheep farmer should understand and monitor closely. Lambing rates can lead you to understand the health of your flock as well as the amount of profit you may make that season. While genetics, nutrition, and health management are the key aspects in lambing rates, careful planning, proper care, goal planning, and good breeding practices can improve outcomes year after year.

By investing time and resources into improving lambing rates, you can build a more sustainable and profitable flock for the long term.

If you're looking for an easy way to organize and keep track of your sheep herd, let Farmbrite's sheep recording software help! Give our sheep management software a try today.