Head Shepherd
Mark Ferguson from neXtgen Agri brings you the latest in livestock, genetics, innovation and technology. We focus on sheep and beef farming in Australia and New Zealand and the people doing great things in those industries.
Head Shepherd
Lamb Survival with Dr Amy Lockwood
Lamb survival is always a hot topic, especially as producers increase their scanning percentages and improve their feeding practices, leading to more multiples. This week on the podcast we have Dr Amy Lockwood, whose research has focused on lamb survival - from paddock size to feed availability.
In this conversation with Dr Mark Ferguson, Amy shares the findings from her PhD research on mob size and lamb survival, illustrating how producers can reduce the size of their lambing paddocks, and manage smaller mobs, for maximum economic value.
Amy explains, "The effects that we've seen for singles, twins and triplets have all been linear. The smaller the mob, the better the lamb's survival. In terms of the economic optimum for mob size, there is a tipping point and that tipping point will vary depending on the enterprise. But just in terms of the relationship between mob size and lamb survival, the smaller the mob, the better - and the more lambs that are going to be marked out of that paddock," which is what every producer wants.
Mark and Amy also discuss how, with advances in technology, it is now possible to monitor lamb behaviour remotely, allowing for more accurate and efficient data collection and better answers to what constitutes a 'good' lambing paddock.
Mark and Amy briefly cover her ongoing projects at Murdoch University. Amy is currently working with Serena Hancock on the 'Edible Shelter Project' (a collaboration with UWA). She is also involved in a project focused on genetic solutions for sheep foot health, a collaboration between Murdoch University, neXtgen Agri, key industry bodies and merino breeders in Australia.
We are fortunate that Amy has recently become part of the neXtgen team (based in Western Australia) and will be sharing more of her wisdom with our clients there.
Head Shepherd is brought to you by neXtgen Agri International Limited. We help livestock farmers get the most out of the genetics they farm with. Get in touch with us if you would like to hear more about how we can help you do what you do best: info@nextgenagri.com.
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Welcome to the Head Shepherd podcast. I'm your host, mark Ferguson, ceo at Next Gen Agri International, where we help livestock managers to get the best out of their stock. I want to take this opportunity to thank our friends at MSD Animal Health in Orflex for sponsoring Head Shepherd again this season, and I'm also excited to introduce our mates at Heinegger as brand new sponsors of the show. Msd in Orflex, or perhaps better known as Cooper's Animal Health in Australia, offer one of New Zealand, australia's, largest livestock product portfolios, with a comprehensive suite of animal health and management products connected through identification, traceability and monitoring solutions. Like us, they see how the wealth and breadth of information born out of this podcast can help their men and their farming clients achieve their mission of the science of healthier animals.
Mark Ferguson:Heinegger will need little introduction to our audience. A market leader and one-stop shop for wool harvesting and animal fibre removal, together with an expanding range of agricultural products and inputs, the Heinegger name is synonymous with quality, reliability and precision. The Heinegger team have a deep understanding of livestock agriculture, backed by Swiss engineering and a family business dedicated to manufacturing the best. It's fantastic to have both of these sponsors supporting us and bringing Head Shepherd to you each week, and now it's time to get on with this week's episode. Welcome back to Head Shepherd. This week we've got our own Amy Lockwood on. Welcome Amy.
Amy Lockwood :Hi Ferg, how are you?
Mark Ferguson:Good, thank you. So I should run with Dr Amy Lockwood? No, definitely not, we'll make sure we get that recognition in there. So, amy, yeah, it's been awesome to have you on the team for the last few weeks or whatever. It's been a month or so. The obviously you're still 20% with Murdoch and 80% with NextGen, so it's great to cement that collaboration between NextGen and Murdoch. We work together a lot. Yeah, maybe we just start with your background.
Amy Lockwood :I guess how you ended up here, or maybe you wonder that some days yeah, so I studied animal science at Murdoch and then when I went on and did my honours in lamb survival and then continued on that path and did my PhD around the effects of mob size and stalking rate on lamb survival Lucky enough to have you as one of my supervisors, so we got to spend a bit of time in New Zealand as part of that and, yeah, I've now fortunately joined the NextGen team as well as retaining my research position at Murdoch.
Mark Ferguson:Cool. So yeah, I'm not sure about Lucky and me being a supervisor go together. One of the most useful supervisors on PhDs, I reckon, but anyway, I guess we think pre-Murdoch. How did you end up interested in egg or animal science?
Amy Lockwood :So I didn't grow up on a farm myself, but grandparents on both sides of the family were farming, so I spent a lot of time on farms growing up and really enjoyed agriculture and that farm lifestyle. So, yeah, originally I wanted to be a vet, as many of the animal scientists at Murdoch are trying to get into vet science through animal science. But after sort of a year I realised that, yeah, that that lifestyle production area was where most of my interests lied, and so I decided to stick with animal science.
Mark Ferguson:Awesome, we're lucky to have you. And yeah, most people end up doing animal science because they can't get into vet, but I don't think that would have been okay, so that would have been a change in passion. So that's all. The mob size stuff has been pretty instrumental in improving lamb survival in the last few years since your PhD, and I guess that was leading up to your PhD. There was a few sort of people that had shown it or were thinking it, but your PhD really sort of put a few numbers around that. So talk us through it. I often get the question what's the optimum mob size, which I say there is none. But you have a better answer than that in terms of how to, I guess, optimise lamb survival.
Amy Lockwood :Yeah, so my PhD a big component of that was the lambing density project that was funded by MLNAWR and that's where we were able to generate recommendations around the optimum mob size for single and twin bearing use. And then some more intensive work through my PhD was trying to understand exactly why high mob sizes are causing for lamb survival, whether that's associated with changes in new lamb behaviour. So, yeah, a lot of well, all of the data that we generated through the mob size surveys and on-farm research was handballed to Young E to do his magic and come up with the economic analysis around the optimum mob size. So yeah, there is no generic recommendations for optimum mob size because it is very enterprise specific. It's influenced by factors like breed and stocking rate, land price, scanning percentage.
Amy Lockwood :So I guess we've shown that trip twins are more sensitive to mob size than single. So we'd be better off prioritising smaller mobs and paddock for our twins. And then the recent research led by Murdoch, the triplets project, has shown that the effect in in triplets is over seven times that in the twins. So again, you'd be wanting to prioritise small mobs and paddocks for those triplets over your twins. But yeah, it would love to generate a sort of decision support all around, mob size and paddock selection for lambing, because it is quite complex and involves a lot of different factors that you need to consider.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, exactly, and I think it was interesting that we were involved in a bit of the survey work in New Zealand and I guess, as part of that sort of, started asking questions about or trying to find common factors in paddocks that would lead to better lamb survival and other than a diary and telling you what happened over the last few years, like there wasn't a lot of that. It's very difficult to say just because it's north facing and got a bit of shelter from that direction and then lots of water points and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all things that kind of like that, but you can still have a panic that has has historically poor lamb survival. So there are lots of factors involved that aren't always obvious and I think keeping records is probably the best way for farmers to actually start understanding what's going on in their paddocks. Yeah, definitely.
Amy Lockwood :Yep, we obviously know that shelter has a big impact on lamb survival in those high chill environments. But, yeah, analyzing all of the data that we've collected from the paddock scale hasn't really shown any specific paddock effects on on-lamb survival, but in terms of paddock characteristics. But yeah, we do know that there are paddocks that are going to perform consistently better than others and having those records really helps you to prioritise those paddocks for the highest risk, use being the multiples, I guess.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, cool. So am I right in saying that every year you take out of the paddock, you have a slight improvement in multiples? Every time you split it up, things go better. So, like you can't, it doesn't. As far as I know, it's linear. You don't sort of doesn't bottom out the effect as long as you keep making it smaller than you get a slight improvement to level.
Amy Lockwood :Yeah, exactly yeah, less sheep in and more yeah. So the effects that we've seen for singles, twins and triplets have all been linear. So the smaller the mob, the better the lamb survival. In terms of the economic optimum for mob size, there is a tipping point and that tipping point will vary depending on the enterprise. But just in terms of the relationship between mob size and lamb survival, the smaller mob, the better. The more lamps that are going to be marked out of that paddock.
Mark Ferguson:Exactly, and so the economics that Youngy did included obviously better grazing pressure and the get other benefits of splitting up paddocks. But you don't have to put in the permanent fences A lot of people now. Obviously temporary fences will do the same thing, so you can run a hot wire up the middle of a paddock and so the same number of views in the total paddock. But by splitting it in half you obviously halve the mob size and therefore increase survival.
Amy Lockwood :Yeah, exactly, and pretty much all of the models that Youngy's run in terms of temporary fencing has shown that the return on investments really high and typically paying off that fence within the year. I guess permanent fencing it does take a bit longer to pay off that fence but there are other longer term benefits, including improved past utilisation. So I just I guess it depends on what works for your enterprise and if it's just splitting them up for lambing, then temporary fencing is definitely a good option.
Mark Ferguson:Even permanent fencing. It wasn't a long time until it was payback, was it? It wasn't talking to you?
Amy Lockwood :No, I think most people then were within sort of three to five years. But obviously it depends on your scenario what sort of starting mob size you're sitting at. But yeah, both fairly economically viable options, just depending on what pathway you want to go down. I guess there's some people, particularly in the wheat belt of WA, where you've got bigger paddocks that are for cropping and then it doesn't really work to have small paddocks in that scenario. So a bit of temporary fencing just for that lambing period is a good option in that scenario. But I guess if you're looking at just running more of a sheep enterprise, then some permanent fencing might be a good option.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, excellent If we get into a bit of the science of what's going on. Obviously that was your PhD, trying to work out what are the causative factors of this phenomenon. What did you find?
Amy Lockwood :Yeah, so there's a few studies run 50, 60 years ago that indicated a greater density of lamb use was associated with a high risk of smothering and new lamb separation. So I guess we were trying to understand if that sort of thing was happening on a commercial scale. And that's what we did when some intensive studies out at the UWA farm at Pingeley. We didn't find anything significant. But I think we're probably more limited by the number of observations that you can get. I guess with human observations we're limited to daylight hours and capturing enough data to really get a good understanding of the effects that are causing that reduce of aisle with harm of sizes is quite hard to capture. But going forward, I guess with the remote technologies we've got available now we can use those to capture new and lamb behavior data rather than having to sit there with binoculars and cameras for hours and trying to sort of understand it from a visual point of view.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, awesome. So, yeah, I guess, as your career is going to be longer than mine, but as we continue on, we'll hopefully answer all these questions. And I think that's true across all these things we've been trying to for years, improve lamb survival, and it's always little small steps and move it all forward and every little bit counts. And I guess, yeah, the results from your PhD of where you are regularly quoting and trying to get people to split up those twin mobs down to as small as possible and that will depend, as you say, on the farm. But we've certainly got people who spent a lot of time spending working out where they're going to put each mob and splitting what they can split where they can put things, and putting a lot of work into that, that lambing plan, which always results in a good outcome and I think that's we're going to see more of that in the future which is which is good for lamb survival for heaps of reasons.
Amy Lockwood :Yeah.
Mark Ferguson:One thing that you've been trying to work on lately, but the seasons haven't always helped you, but I guess it's an age old question. And when, when you do get a late autumn, or you're lambing, when before, the green grass is around, either by choice or by accident, or by poor season, whether you should put them out on, put feeders out or trial feed, or how you should get nutrition into those use, because we know that if we don't get the right nutrition then we have all sorts of issues. But we also know that we cause a lot of chaos by trying to feed them. What have? Have you got anywhere with that work? Or that's still still in progress and waiting for the right autumn?
Amy Lockwood :Yeah, still in progress. We've had a few sort of seasons, particularly over East, where there's not been a lot of feeding required.
Amy Lockwood :We had a bit of a false break over here this year but only managed to get one site. So yeah, it's been a bit of a tricky one to actually get the work done, but still a lot of interest from producers in terms of the the outcome. So yeah, so far we've done 12 sites out of 24 or 28 and no, nothing's standing out so far, but obviously we're quite limited in the data we've got at the moment.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, right, so what are you comparing?
Amy Lockwood :So we're looking at survival of single and twin borne lambs when the use are fed by cell feeders or trial feeding throughout lambing. So I guess there's been a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest that cell feeders or trial feeding is better than the other, and a lot of producers have sort of an opinion and you know going down the path would be the one option or the other, based on their experiences, but we don't actually have any science behind that. So yeah, I guess we had a lot of queries from producers through the lambing density project and other projects related to lamb survival about how they should be going about supplementary feeding use through lambing and you know what time of day should they be feeding and what frequency during the week, and so there's some of the answers that we're trying to sort of formulate through this work.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, pretty important stuff, and particularly with the well we work in Australia, where there's always going to be different seasons and the need to feed sheep. So, yeah, really important to try and get some numbers around. What is the recommended practice? The trip of the workers that Murdoch's been leading is starting to wrap up, as that's an interesting thing. What was it? Seven times higher impact of density? Was it on triplets?
Amy Lockwood :Yeah, so in the triplets the effect of mob size was about 15% reduction in lamb survival for each extra hundred years in the mob. The triplet mob sizes were fairly small so it wouldn't sort of go beyond about 200 years, but in the twins it's about 2%. So yeah, over seven times the effect in the triplets, which is really showing that it is a high priority to be lambing them in smaller mobs. And I guess as well Youngies Analysis has showed that most of the economic value out of scanning for triplets is because of the ability to then prioritise their lambing paddocks and get them into smaller mobs. So that's really where the payoff is coming in terms of managing triplets to make more money and get more to survive.
Mark Ferguson:A quick interruption here to remind you of Headship at Premium and our consulting services at Next and Agri International. If you love this podcast and want to hear more of them, visit the hubnextandagricom and sign up for Headship at Premium and get an extra podcast each week. If you're listening to this and thinking you really do want to maximise the journey going to your lifestyle and feel more confident around the decisions you're making on farm, then send me an email at mark at nextandagricom and we'll get in touch and see where that takes us. Yeah right, is there anything else coming out of that? I mean, it's probably maybe too early yet in terms of analysis, but is there anything else coming out of the triplet project that's sort of we haven't known before or that's been confirmed?
Amy Lockwood :The other main finding or key finding out of that project was related to management of condition score for merino and maternal use and we found particularly merinos that use that are in poorer condition score at lambing and that lose condition between lambing and marking have a higher risk of mortality and that their survival of their lands is also poorer. So managing condition score is really important. The effect of condition score in maternal is a little bit less important than in merinos but still a significant effect on new mortality when they're losing condition through that late pregnancy sort of early lactation period. Yeah, I guess that's. Yeah, I guess that's Well.
Mark Ferguson:I guess those people that have lambed down a lot of triplets understand it, but we often think of triplets as just being a lamp survival issue, but it's also a big immortality issue as well. Yeah, and we have lots of people, I guess, wishing they don't have triplets. But as we get better genetics and better at our feeding, we do end up with more triplets around and have to, and so I guess that's the hence the project, trying to understand exactly how we would optimise their management.
Amy Lockwood :Yeah it's.
Mark Ferguson:I guess we're still a bit away from having any silver bullets or triplets, but small mobs and making sure really careful management of conditions course seem like a couple of winners.
Amy Lockwood :Yeah, yeah, they were the two sort of key findings from that project. We did also look at the effect of full and supplementary feeding and minerals mineral supplementation through sort of like pregnancy and lactation, but none of that was significant statistically and so, yeah, those, those two key findings were related to management of condition score and then small mobs at lambing.
Mark Ferguson:So those numbers getting down to, we see a lot of people sort of lambing triplets down to almost 10s, 15s, mobs at 20, very, very small groups. Is that, what does the economics?
Amy Lockwood :Or we probably haven't done the economics yet.
Mark Ferguson:But what are we? What are we thinking is sort of would be an kind of optimum number for lambing triplets.
Amy Lockwood :Yeah, off the top of my head I think Youngies modelling was sitting around 20 to 40 years for triplets. So yeah, a lot smaller than than twins and again smaller than the singles. But yeah, again, the optimum for a given enterprise is going to vary depending on various factors but, yeah, those much smaller, yeah, very small mobs are optimum for triplets.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, right. So if we pull together what you know across your years of lamb survival, we've got most people in Australia are probably lambed, but we've got New Zealand lambing upon us. Probably the north is well underway but the south is is yet to lamb a lot of the reno places. So what are our recommendations, I suppose, in terms of mob size and where we put what, where we put our high risk mobs or what are the high risk groups of sheep and all that sort of capper?
Amy Lockwood :Yeah, so I guess we know that condition score is the key factor determining lamb survival. So making sure that we're getting nutrition right is probably the priority, before looking at mob size. So obviously the skinnier multiples are going to be your highest risk years and you want to have them in small mobs as well. So yeah, I guess prioritising your best paddocks for those lighter multiples and having them in small mobs and then, I guess, getting up to your fatter singles and they're probably the lowest risk out of the lot and can be put on a bit of a harsher paddock and probably will still do all right, yeah exactly and I think that's a good point that we well, I feel like we've been talking about.
Mark Ferguson:Well, neither is for that old. Well, I'm a lot older than you, but it feels like the industry's been talking about condition score and management for forever and yet still there's not that many enterprises that actually routinely would condition score everything and know where they're skinnier or which ones are their skinny twins or skinny multiples. But they are clearly the priority and we need to know where they are, and by now it's too late to do much about it other than prioritise which mob they're going to. But if at the back of the scanning crate, that's when there's a time to separate those or find those skinny twins or skinny triplets and actually prioritise their feeding so they do get them back into that more optimal condition.
Amy Lockwood :Yeah, exactly yeah.
Mark Ferguson:So, yeah, I guess, if we move on to the next chapter in your career, which was luckily with us at Next Gen. So I guess, looking forward well, hopefully you're looking forward to getting into a bit of genetics in WA over there.
Amy Lockwood :Yeah, definitely. I've sort of had my head in the repro lambsurvival space for quite a while now and definitely came to branch out a bit and get stuck into the genetics space and help the Next Gen clients reach their goals within their shape enterprises.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, and definitely lots of them looking forward to that. And yeah, we're just, I guess, getting into it and as the year progresses you'll get around our current clients over there and see if you obviously ran a TWA our key client over there as Hillcroft Farms and Mojbin and a range of others Moggler Springs we've got some great Ramberating clients and a whole bit of good commercial clients over there, so it's great to have you based there. It's great to have Georgia Pew coming back on deck in the next few weeks after a bit of maternity leave, so we've got a bit of a power duo over there in WA, so that's pretty exciting for us.
Amy Lockwood :Yeah, and it'll be great to get stuck in and start visiting some clients over here.
Mark Ferguson:Cool. What's next on research? Is there any projects sort of starting away at Murdoch, or are you sort of just finishing up stuff at the moment?
Amy Lockwood :Well, good question. So I'm also involved in the Edible Shelter Project which Serena Hancock is leading, which is a sort of a joint project with UWA looking at the heat stress component, and then Serena out of Murdoch is leading the sort of shrub and shelter component looking at land survival, and then also some involvement in the new genetics and feet health project as well.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, a couple of interesting projects. So what is the edible shadow? Is that salt bush, or is it arranged different edible? Or arranged different shrubs and WA focused, or is that a national product?
Amy Lockwood :Yeah, so that's a national project.
Amy Lockwood :There's sites over in New South Wales as well as over here. Haley Norman is leading the shrub component and then there's been a couple of shrub sites set up looking at different designs and configurations within the farm and looking at different palatable and unpollutable species to see sort of preference and utilization and whether there's a difference in use sticking to those palatable shrubs at lambing if they're not having to actually leave the birth site to go feed. So yeah, I guess the shrub component is one of the trials and then also looking at the effect of lambing onto crops on lamb survival and what sort of height of crop is optimum. I guess there's quite a few people now that are lambing onto vegetative crops or at least running use on them in, like pregnancy. So sort of trying to understand you know, if the crop gets too high, are they miss mothering because they actually can't find their lambs, and sort of how short can you go to actually get a benefit from that shelter? So yeah, that project's looking at comparing your best pasture paddock with shrubs and then crop as well.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, right, and there was has previously been work. I think Dave Masters was involved and definitely Tom I was, but in terms of crops and I guess managing calcium and magnesium and stuff, have we got that side of the equation sorted?
Amy Lockwood :Yeah, so it's still a bit of work to do in that space. So that work did show you that supplementing the use with a mineral supplement containing calcium can improve the calcium status, which presumably would reduce the risk of metabolic disease. But the actual effect on lamb survival and whether you know that metabolic disease translates into parolamb survival is still sort of fairly unknown. So, yeah, part of that project is sort of understanding how lambing onto crops impacts lamb survival and then, yeah, providing mineral supplements is sort of one of the key strategic options to make sure that those use aren't getting into metabolic disease in late pregnancy and sort of early lactation.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, yeah, excellent. The other project you mentioned, which is one of my personal favourites, which is the sheep's feet, but and you're our project lead at next gen for that project it's yeah, we were literally just getting underway or not quite underway with, but we do have a webinar this Thursday. So this podcast goes out on the 4th of September and and we'll have a webinar on the 7th, which is, I think, thursday. And so, yeah, if anyone is interested in that project to be good, to get you along, it's it's Ram Brita focused and we're looking at trying to improve or understand the genetics of feet, health, sort of replicate some of the work that's been done in New Zealand in terms of the Flock breeding Bay, but also extend that to understand a bit more about Skulled or OID and a bit about foot shape as well. So, other than the fact we have to look at lots of sheep's feet, that's going to be an exciting project, project.
Amy Lockwood :Yeah, sounds like a great project and I'm keen to sort of get stuck into a bit more of the genetic aspect of it as well. And yeah, I'm sure I'll learn a fair bit about sheep feet over the next couple of years.
Mark Ferguson:More than more than you'd ever want, I think. Anyway, get excited about looking at sheep's feet eventually. Yeah, yeah, that probably probably wraps it up, amy, any anything else that we need to talk about.
Amy Lockwood :Not that I can think of.
Mark Ferguson:Cool, yeah, right, I also think so, amy. Great, yeah, great to have you on board there in WA and great to have a chat tonight and look forward to working with you and seeing how we can shake things up over there in WA. Obviously, it's a bit of a tough time for the sheep industry in Western Australia, so it's great to have some of your enthusiasm and positivity over there to help Gros get through what's going to be a bit of a tough few years, unfortunately.
Amy Lockwood :Yeah, definitely I'm keen to get stuck in.
Mark Ferguson:Cheers. Thanks, Amy.
Amy Lockwood :Thanks, Berg.
Mark Ferguson:Thanks again to our mates at Heinegger, who are proud world leaders in the manufacturing and supply professional sheep shearing and clipping equipment. They understand that their customers rely on the quality and performance of their products each and every day. Also, thanks to our friends at MSD Animal Health in Orflix, they offer an extensive livestock portfolio focused on animal health and management, all backed up by exceptional service. Both of these companies are wonderful supporters of the Australian and New Zealand livestock industries and we thank them for sponsoring the HIPAA podcast.
