Breeding Management
Small and mighty pin prevails!
24
Jun
Jun
Arwel Jones is a third-generation farmer who helps run the family farm at Blaen Cwm, Cwmpenanner near Cerrigydrudion alongside his father, as well as doing some shepherding work on a nearby farm. Keeping a flock of cross Romney and Welsh for the past eleven or twelve years, they have also introduced the Innovis’ breed Aberfield and sell the ewe lambs as breeding ewes.
The much sought after Aberfield Ewes, known for having attributes such as a higher lambing percentage, the ability to produce good crossbred lambs and do well on upland pasture are all recognisable traits. By now Arwel sells many of his ewe lambs across NW/NE Wales and over to the Welsh/English boarder.
He began using the TagFaster system back in 2015 and has been using alternate colours since then to highlight different years very easily. Around six weeks of age the lambs are all tagged, along with their ears being notched and are drenched at the same time. Lambs with their mothers will be sent away to the other grazing area and bought back when it’s time to sell, which can be up to eight or nine months later and he has found that he has never had to replace a slaughter tag in any of their ears.
Whilst tagging the breeding ewe lambs he has never come across infected ears, Arwel believes this is down to the small, but strong pin not making a large hole in the year. As part of his shepherding work, he tags up to four hundred lambs at a time. Having done this in the past singularly, he really does appreciate the TagFaster applicator being able to hold a whole strip of twenty tags at a time and would never go back to the labour and menial task of tagging one by one again. Admittedly the tags are dearer than the single use version, but it saves so much time using the TagFaster applicator- he feels it’s certainly worth it!
“I tag ram lambs with the slaughter tag at around six weeks of age and have never had to re-tag before selling”