Jennifer MacKenzie is an agricultural photo journalist with almost 30 year's experience. Operating from her base in Cumbria, Jennifer undertakes mainly industry-related freelance writing and photography.
New Zealand Romney has low input farming tagged
New Zealand Romney sheep have successfully provided the low input, low maintenance enterprise Marcus Maxwell set out to achieve nine years ago on his 1,400 acre grassland farm in south west Scotland.
 |
| Marcus Maxwell and his New Zealand Romney sheep. |
He wanted to model his system on those in New Zealand where he had previously spent some time, and not be reliant on subsidies, running ewes that would lamb without assistance yet still give a good return.
Mr Maxwell runs the livestock enterprise at Viewfield, New Galloway, with the help of one worker and with speed in tagging lambs at tail docking time essential, he has been using the Adamatic automatic sheep tagging system from Scottish Borders manufacturer Roxan ID for the past three years.
Among those already who have also taken up the system are The Royal College of Agriculture at Cirencester, SAC, Roslin, and many leading sheep producers and breeders.
In the last 12 months, Roxan tag sales have more than trebled to six million in the UK thanks to the popularity of Adamatic. This represents one in five UK lambs/sheep.
The holding, which is divided by the River Ken carries 2,000 sheep, 1,600 of which are now pure-bred New Zealand Romneys, bred up from two batches of 400 Kent Romney ewes crossed with the New Zealand type rams, as well as 180 three quarter Aberdeen Angus suckler cows, again with the emphasis on easy care.
 |
| Marcus Maxwell with his four year old trainee shepherd son Murphy and a New Zealand Romney lamb with Adamatic ear tag. |
With as many as 3,500 lambs to tag at tail docking time at around two weeks old, the fast, efficient and welfare friendly Adamatic system speeds up the job of identifying the sheep for breeding purposes.
The Romneys are lambed outside in mid April, being set-stocked at between five to six sheep to the acre.
“Lambing is a main event for us. This year after two weeks we had 30 ewes left to lamb. Rams are only out in the autumn for 26 days. My belief is that if you can get the ewes to conceive faster then you can cut down on the lambing time.
“We set up mobile yards in the field so that we can ring and tag the lambs – between 400 and 500 a day. Previously we wouldn’t tag lambs at docking time as it would take far too long and we would tag them at finishing.
“However, with the Adamatic system tagging is so much quicker that it allows us to do this.
“Roxan ID has developed its system over the years and the tags now have stronger pins and the numbers and colours of the tag last well.
“By tagging the young lambs we are getting an added management benefit to the cost of tagging rather than doing the operation before sale.
“Very few tags are lost probably as few as one or two per cent. Even with the hoggs which are away wintered, very few come back to the farm without a tag.
“The system is very welfare friendly for lambs which are only two weeks old. There is no bleeding or infected ears. The small pin is definitely an advantage when tagging small lambs.”
 |
| A New Zealand Romney ram with two ear tags. |
Mr Maxwell uses different colours of Adamatic tags all bearing the UK flock number, depending on whether the lambs are likely to retained for breeding and their sex.
All the males which will not be kept for breeding have a green tag. Those for females kept as flock replacements are spearmint, green for females that will probably be sold store or finished and orange for breeding lambs to sell.
They get a second tag the colour of which denotes one of the flock’s five families and for its scrapie genotype.
Different tag guns are loaded with different colours of tags during the operation. The guns are efficient with probably as few as 40 tags out of 2,500 having to be discarded.
 |
| Romney lamb with ear tag. |
Mr Maxwell plans to switch to electronic tags for next year which will make available a computerised record of the sheep’s breeding as well as a DNA test which will be carried out prior to tagging, to further streamline record keeping and specifically identify the superior rams. He is currently looking at the Adamatic electronic system.
Currently two rams are used on each mob of ewes which are associated with particular families in the flock and because the farm is split in two halves, rams are used on mobs in alternate years.
It is essential to be able to identify stock rams and Mr Maxwell is more than pleased that none of the rams tagged two years ago have lost their tags.
The New Zealand Romney flock has been gradually taking over from the original flock of Blackfaces run by the Maxwell family when they bought 500 acres of what they currently farm 18 years ago.
The farm was increased to today’s 1,400 acres with the purchase of two neighbouring units and a further 120 acres is rented.
The Blackfaces were originally crossed with the Bluefaced Leicester and more recently Suffolk and Texel rams were crossed onto the Mules.
The Romneys, as well as being easily managed with low inputs are also being selectively bred to eradicate feet problems and susceptibility to worms to further cut costs.
The flock’s lambing percentage of numbers at docking time was around 150 per cent and bloodlines of the more prolific New Zealand sheep will continue to be used through AI to lift lamb numbers to a not unmanageable level.
“We have averaged lambing one ewe a year and out losses are 10 per cent from scanning to docking which is a lot lower than we had when we four people looking after the sheep when they were housed.”
Lambs are either sold store or finished and sold through Galloway Lamb, part of Farmstock Scotland, depending on fluctuations in the market.
Mr Maxwell says the lambs achieve similar grades to the Suffolk crosses and generally average 19kg deadweight, however, if prices in early summer were high he would sell the lambs at lighter weights.
The in-lamb ewes are fed £4 a head of concentrates during March before being put onto 200 acres of grazing which has been shut up during the winter.
Now the flock is established there is a ready market for breeding sheep which are all sold privately.
“Farmers are now realising that the days of cashing their subsidy cheques are over and they are looking at how they can make their stock perform a lot better,” said Mr Maxwell.
“From enquiries we have had this year we could have sold 20,000 breeding ewes and that is not necessarily from people wanting to replace their entire flock but perhaps want to introduce 200 or 400 Romneys. There is also a big demand for rams as crossing ewes.”
