Saying that, had I looked upon this income as a little something for my retirement and invested it in a pension it would be worthless now anyway. I guess you don't miss what you never had.
With a few cracks starting to appear in winter's firm grip
on Northumberland, we can be forgiven for looking forward to the spring and ultimately the summer ahead. Some of those early reminders of the changing seasons are already starting to appear; the daffodils are blooming, the lawn needs cut and, of course, the first lambs are in the fields.
Like everyone, our farmers are feeling the pinch at the moment, making a successful lambing especially important this year and with many flocks due to start in the coming weeks there are a number of things that can be done to help this.
In truth, the potential success of lambing started last autumn when the tups were put out. In previous diaries I have highlighted the importance of checking that the tups are fit and healthy and most importantly fertile to maximise the number of lambs born. Assuming this was done the next task is to ensure that as many of those lambs are born live and then grow as quickly as possible.
There are several strings to this; firstly, the control of infectious disease. There are a number of contagious organisms that will cause pregnant sheep to abort, Toxoplasma and Enzootic abortion to name just two. Vaccines are available for both; dramatically reducing the impact of an out break and loses in following years and so any problems should be investigated sooner rather than later.
Unfortunately diseases come in different guises. Being free of infectious bugs is no guarantee to a trouble free lambing; equally significant are the metabolic diseases.
It goes without saying that carrying lambs within their womb is pretty hard work for a ewe; with twins being more work than a single and triplets tougher again. Seventy five per cent of the lambs foetal growth is in the last six weeks which makes this period most critical.
In addition the ewes with multiples of lambs have less space for their stomachs as they get nearer to lambing so they are unable to eat as much when they need it most. Consequently, the amount and quality of food required will vary between individuals depending on how many lambs they have.
To this end, performing ultrasound scans to count the lambs in the womb and thus divide the flock accordingly has helped significantly to ensure that those sheep with the heaviest loads get fed the most food.
However, as you might imagine nature is never as simple as that. In spite of large amounts of research into the bio-availability of many diets and careful calculations of actual ewe requirements it is still difficult to predict just how well the sheep are doing. The result is that we still see large numbers of sheep suffering from pregnancy toxaemia (or twin lamb disease) an often fatal condition caused by an energy imbalance where the diet is insufficient and characterised by animals off their legs and not wanting to eat.
Less immediately obvious in terms of clinical signs is a shortage of protein as more often than not it is the lamb that is affected; born weak and then failing to grow as its mother's colostrums is poor in quality.
Already this year we have managed to prevent problems by blood testing samples of sheep within a group and checking their metabolic status.
With results available quickly, we can measure blood glucose and beta-hydroxybuterate, giving an accurate picture of both instantaneous and ongoing energy levels.
Similarly, blood concentrations of albumen and urea provide a complete picture of protein metabolism.
Though the sheep themselves were apparently well, their bloods showed that they were actually on a knife edge and adjustments to their diets were made accordingly, thankfully, with enough time for them to recover before clinical disease is seen – the early warning ensuring prevention is better than cure.
