The basics of managing reproduction in sheep

Profitability in sheep farming depends primarily on the productivity of the breeding ewes. In this article, Dr Louis du Pisani, an independent agricultural consultant, discusses the key factors that determine the reproduction and productivity rate of a flock of sheep, and how to exploit these to the full.

- Dr Louis du Pisani

There is a close positive correlation between the economic success of sheep farming and the reproduction rate of breeding ewes. Reproduction success is expressed in a number of ways, including pregnancy rate and lambing percentage. However, the best measure is ewe productivity, where the kilograms of lamb produced by the breeding herd is expressed in terms of the total live weight of the flock.

This measure of ewe productivity combines all the contributing factors (conception rate, lambing percentage, weaning percentage, weaning weight, marketing percentage and marketing weight) into one single productivity figure.

MAKE EWE PRODUCTIVITY THE PRIORITY

The Pareto principle states that about 80% of outcomes (or outputs) result from 20% of all causes (or inputs) for any given event. In business, the goal should therefore always be to identify those inputs that are potentially the most productive, and prioritise them. Considering that 75% of a sheep enterprise’s profitability can be directly linked to ewe productivity, it makes sense for sheep producers to prioritise the management factors that affect ewe productivity the most.

US author and entrepreneur Jim Rohn once said: “To be successful, you don’t need to do extraordinary things. You just need to do the ordinary things extraordinarily well.”

BODY CONDITION SCORE

There is a link between a ewe’s productivity and her condition at crucial points in her reproduction cycle. Monitoring the flock’s body condition score (BCS) at certain critical stages is thus one of those basic, non-negotiable management principles (see Table 1 for a breakdown of target BCSs at the key stages of the reproduction cycle).