Ed Brant 26 Lincolnshire
Having spent time working in the industry as a sheep breeding consultant, Ed’s desire to see his own family farm’s sheep enterprise move forward has driven his return to full time work at home. Ed now runs 400 ewes plus replacements, a mixture of maternal Lleyns ewes and a terminal flock of Hampshire Downs. His background means he is part of performance recording projects providing him with comparative results from which he can make decisions and improvements to the family’s system. But Ed is insistent there is still a lot for him to learn about the sheep sector. He recognises his strength lies in his genetics knowledge but says he is looking forward to learning more through the ambassador programme. On joining the programme Ed says: “I am thrilled to have been selected and can't wait to get started at the first session. I am looking forward to meeting and learning from the sessions and also to start a more active relationship with NSA. I think it is important to get off farm to meet and learn from others in the industry, and this programme offers a unique opportunity for this.”
Ed kept a blog in 2022
March. Firstly, I would like to thank NSA for such a brilliant opportunity to join the Next Generation Ambassador programme. The first session held in February was excellent. It is a great group of ambassadors, which makes me feel very positive about the future of the industry. We saw some great farms and systems and I learnt a lot from the sessions with Philippa Page from Flock Health. At home it has been a month of ups and downs for the flock as we have moved into spring and look ahead to lambing. We scanned our 370 ewes and 40 ewe lambs over the weekend. I was disappointed with our ewes scanning at 153%. The main driver of this low scan was the high number of empties. Looking through the information, it is a problem across the majority of the groups. After discussion with the vet, this is likely to be either a disease issues or nutrition that we are going to investigate further to avoid the problem next year. The ewe lambs were slightly more pleasing with a scan of 86%. Fertility is such a key driver of flock output and profitability and something I really need to focus to improve. We are pretty much at the end of our winter forage and all the ewes will be coming off it within the week. The ewe lambs and ram lambs have been off their stubble turnips a couple of weeks, which is now being drilled with spring barley. One of the most exciting updates over the past month, is the release of Signet’s new maternal evaluation, focused on efficient and productive ewes. This evaluation also contains new parasite resistance and carcase quality traits. We are now on the countdown to lambing, which I am looking forward to with some caution. I wish a successful lambing to all those that are currently lambing.
April. As I write this, we have nearly finished the first week of lambing and the weather has been a great help so far. It has been a relatively slow start, but things are starting to pick up now. At scanning it looked like the majority of ewes would lamb in the first cycle, so things are going to get busier. We overwintered the ewes on fodder beet and stubble turnips, trying to get them off grass sooner in the autumn. This has really made a difference to the grass in the spring compared to previous years. We have drilled the fodder beet for next winter and the spring barley that was grown after the beet and stubble turnips looks to have established well. All the sheep are lambed outside, so the main job at the moment is getting the information for performance recording. We collect a birth weight, ID, date of birth and dam information (which links to the single sire groups of the ewes). Handling the lambs at this stage is a good opportunity to assess if they’ve had a drink, their vigour and the ewes mothering ability, with problem animals recorded to be removed from the flock. I am a firm believer that genetics are the biggest thing we can control in our flock, with nutrition and disease being the others. The results from the blood tests are in from the barren ewes. It looks like toxoplasmosis was the cause. We have sneaked away without vaccinating until now, but we will definitely be vaccinating the incoming ewes this year. I have nominated a few more of our Hampshire rams to the Ram Compare project and am looking forward to the results webinar in May, to see how all the top terminal sire rams compare on commercial farms.
June. Our lambing came to an end in late May. I think this year has gone the best for us so far and our ewe lambs have been the standout performers for us. Each year we are having to help less, while lamb survival is increasing, so it is good to see that our selection policy is working. We planted our fodder beet and a herbal ley over lambing. Both are now growing well and enjoying the sunshine and warm weather we are getting. I am really excited to see how the lambs perform on the ley. The aim is to keep the lambs growing well after weaning and take the pressure off the grass fields. Now lambing is over, our thoughts are now turning to selling our shearling rams. The results for Ram Compare were released in late May, with our Hampshires among the best of any breed for growth, days to slaughter and carcase weight. We are holding an open day on 7th July with the Hampshire Sheep Society to talk about the results and breeding rams on an outdoor lambing forage system.
August. We have only got a few hectares of spring barley to harvest this year. This will be one of our earliest harvests ever, and despite the lack of water yields have been okay and we have been able to harvest mainly dry grain. When we vaccinated our lambs for the second time in July we weighed them and they were growing well. With grass getting really tight we weighed them again, found they were standing still and so weaned them. The ewe lambs went onto red clover and the ram lambs onto a mixture of chicory, plantain and clover. Both have continued to grow without rain and I am really pleased how the ram lambs look. We will weigh them this week so will see if it matches how they look! I would highly recommend these leys to anyone looking for an alternative to bagged feed. We are ultrasound scanning our lambs next week, which measures their muscle and fat depth. This along with their weights helps us to pick out those with the best genetics for breeding.
September. It has been a busy time finishing harvest, preparing the ground for next year, ram sales and getting measurements from our lambs for the evaluation and drawing lambs for slaughter. Over the last month we have ultrasound scanned nearly all the lambs, looking at muscle and fat depth. We also CT scanned the top 10 Hampshire ram lambs, to give us the most accurate carcase information and help maintain progress in carcase weight and conformation. We have also taken around 30 blood serum samples from our Lleyn ram lambs with the potential for breeding. This is to provide EBVs for IgA level, which is linked to parasite resistance. It is an exciting time and I am looking forward to receiving the results over the next few weeks. In the meantime, we have tried integrating the sheep a little more with the arable, by fencing fields off and grazing the volunteers. We tried a field of oil seed rape and a couple of spring barley. The ewes seemed to much prefer the spring barley and what would seem to be a field full of volunteers would soon turn back to just stubble. The ewes do look really well on it though and seem to have gained a good bit of weight. The lambs we have been grazing on the chicory and plantain really did grow fantastically and we were able to draw around 60% of the lambs earlier this month. The majority graded U and Rs and were almost all 3L. Stubble turnip establishment has been a little patchy so this should ease the pressure over winter.
October. As the nights begin to draw in and the weather turns wetter and colder it does really feel like we are into winter. We didn’t get as much forage stored as usual, but most of the forage crops have grown well and the grass fields that have been rested seem to have good covers. It should even out the lack of conserved feed and I am just finalising the winter grazing plan and planning next year’s too. The majority of the lambs that will be sold finished this year have gone already, which is a big improvement on last year. With the change in season, the middle of November will soon be here. I have run the potential rams and our ewes through Signet’s inbreeding calculator (a fantastic tool!) and have allocated ewes to rams to minimize inbreeding and maximise genetic gain. All the data has been entered into the evaluation (including the CT data) and one of my favourite ram lambs is the top ram lamb in the country. We will use him ourselves this year, along with a couple of high genetic merit homebred ram lambs and shearlings. Earlier in the month we took blood samples from our Lleyn ram lambs to measure IgA levels, which enables us to select animals with the best worm resistance and is a great advantage of being part of the Performance Recorded Lleyn Breeders (PRLB) group. Both rams we bought this year have high EBVs in their IgA levels and I am excited to see how their progeny perform. This is a very exiting trait and I think vitally important to the industry, and it is great (PRLB) are gathering so much data to enable this.
End of the year comment: The NSA Next Generation programme has been extremely enjoyable and valuable. I have taken huge amounts of knowledge from each session and always found myself looking forward to next one. Over the year we had some fantastic speakers and visited some thought-provoking farmers. It was not just the systems, but the mindset of these farmers that was great to witness and has changed how I approach our farm, hurdles I come across, and plans for the future. I feel I have learned so much and have really developed my thinking and understanding. One of my favourite sessions focussed on the supply chain. We started at Marc Jones’ farm looking at grazing management and farm business. There was so much to take on and it really was a next level farm. We then had talks from AHDB looking at genetics and the marketing of lambs followed by an interesting visit to an abattoir.
Having spent time working in the industry as a sheep breeding consultant, Ed’s desire to see his own family farm’s sheep enterprise move forward has driven his return to full time work at home. Ed now runs 400 ewes plus replacements, a mixture of maternal Lleyns ewes and a terminal flock of Hampshire Downs. His background means he is part of performance recording projects providing him with comparative results from which he can make decisions and improvements to the family’s system. But Ed is insistent there is still a lot for him to learn about the sheep sector. He recognises his strength lies in his genetics knowledge but says he is looking forward to learning more through the ambassador programme. On joining the programme Ed says: “I am thrilled to have been selected and can't wait to get started at the first session. I am looking forward to meeting and learning from the sessions and also to start a more active relationship with NSA. I think it is important to get off farm to meet and learn from others in the industry, and this programme offers a unique opportunity for this.”
Ed kept a blog in 2022
March. Firstly, I would like to thank NSA for such a brilliant opportunity to join the Next Generation Ambassador programme. The first session held in February was excellent. It is a great group of ambassadors, which makes me feel very positive about the future of the industry. We saw some great farms and systems and I learnt a lot from the sessions with Philippa Page from Flock Health. At home it has been a month of ups and downs for the flock as we have moved into spring and look ahead to lambing. We scanned our 370 ewes and 40 ewe lambs over the weekend. I was disappointed with our ewes scanning at 153%. The main driver of this low scan was the high number of empties. Looking through the information, it is a problem across the majority of the groups. After discussion with the vet, this is likely to be either a disease issues or nutrition that we are going to investigate further to avoid the problem next year. The ewe lambs were slightly more pleasing with a scan of 86%. Fertility is such a key driver of flock output and profitability and something I really need to focus to improve. We are pretty much at the end of our winter forage and all the ewes will be coming off it within the week. The ewe lambs and ram lambs have been off their stubble turnips a couple of weeks, which is now being drilled with spring barley. One of the most exciting updates over the past month, is the release of Signet’s new maternal evaluation, focused on efficient and productive ewes. This evaluation also contains new parasite resistance and carcase quality traits. We are now on the countdown to lambing, which I am looking forward to with some caution. I wish a successful lambing to all those that are currently lambing.
April. As I write this, we have nearly finished the first week of lambing and the weather has been a great help so far. It has been a relatively slow start, but things are starting to pick up now. At scanning it looked like the majority of ewes would lamb in the first cycle, so things are going to get busier. We overwintered the ewes on fodder beet and stubble turnips, trying to get them off grass sooner in the autumn. This has really made a difference to the grass in the spring compared to previous years. We have drilled the fodder beet for next winter and the spring barley that was grown after the beet and stubble turnips looks to have established well. All the sheep are lambed outside, so the main job at the moment is getting the information for performance recording. We collect a birth weight, ID, date of birth and dam information (which links to the single sire groups of the ewes). Handling the lambs at this stage is a good opportunity to assess if they’ve had a drink, their vigour and the ewes mothering ability, with problem animals recorded to be removed from the flock. I am a firm believer that genetics are the biggest thing we can control in our flock, with nutrition and disease being the others. The results from the blood tests are in from the barren ewes. It looks like toxoplasmosis was the cause. We have sneaked away without vaccinating until now, but we will definitely be vaccinating the incoming ewes this year. I have nominated a few more of our Hampshire rams to the Ram Compare project and am looking forward to the results webinar in May, to see how all the top terminal sire rams compare on commercial farms.
June. Our lambing came to an end in late May. I think this year has gone the best for us so far and our ewe lambs have been the standout performers for us. Each year we are having to help less, while lamb survival is increasing, so it is good to see that our selection policy is working. We planted our fodder beet and a herbal ley over lambing. Both are now growing well and enjoying the sunshine and warm weather we are getting. I am really excited to see how the lambs perform on the ley. The aim is to keep the lambs growing well after weaning and take the pressure off the grass fields. Now lambing is over, our thoughts are now turning to selling our shearling rams. The results for Ram Compare were released in late May, with our Hampshires among the best of any breed for growth, days to slaughter and carcase weight. We are holding an open day on 7th July with the Hampshire Sheep Society to talk about the results and breeding rams on an outdoor lambing forage system.
August. We have only got a few hectares of spring barley to harvest this year. This will be one of our earliest harvests ever, and despite the lack of water yields have been okay and we have been able to harvest mainly dry grain. When we vaccinated our lambs for the second time in July we weighed them and they were growing well. With grass getting really tight we weighed them again, found they were standing still and so weaned them. The ewe lambs went onto red clover and the ram lambs onto a mixture of chicory, plantain and clover. Both have continued to grow without rain and I am really pleased how the ram lambs look. We will weigh them this week so will see if it matches how they look! I would highly recommend these leys to anyone looking for an alternative to bagged feed. We are ultrasound scanning our lambs next week, which measures their muscle and fat depth. This along with their weights helps us to pick out those with the best genetics for breeding.
September. It has been a busy time finishing harvest, preparing the ground for next year, ram sales and getting measurements from our lambs for the evaluation and drawing lambs for slaughter. Over the last month we have ultrasound scanned nearly all the lambs, looking at muscle and fat depth. We also CT scanned the top 10 Hampshire ram lambs, to give us the most accurate carcase information and help maintain progress in carcase weight and conformation. We have also taken around 30 blood serum samples from our Lleyn ram lambs with the potential for breeding. This is to provide EBVs for IgA level, which is linked to parasite resistance. It is an exciting time and I am looking forward to receiving the results over the next few weeks. In the meantime, we have tried integrating the sheep a little more with the arable, by fencing fields off and grazing the volunteers. We tried a field of oil seed rape and a couple of spring barley. The ewes seemed to much prefer the spring barley and what would seem to be a field full of volunteers would soon turn back to just stubble. The ewes do look really well on it though and seem to have gained a good bit of weight. The lambs we have been grazing on the chicory and plantain really did grow fantastically and we were able to draw around 60% of the lambs earlier this month. The majority graded U and Rs and were almost all 3L. Stubble turnip establishment has been a little patchy so this should ease the pressure over winter.
October. As the nights begin to draw in and the weather turns wetter and colder it does really feel like we are into winter. We didn’t get as much forage stored as usual, but most of the forage crops have grown well and the grass fields that have been rested seem to have good covers. It should even out the lack of conserved feed and I am just finalising the winter grazing plan and planning next year’s too. The majority of the lambs that will be sold finished this year have gone already, which is a big improvement on last year. With the change in season, the middle of November will soon be here. I have run the potential rams and our ewes through Signet’s inbreeding calculator (a fantastic tool!) and have allocated ewes to rams to minimize inbreeding and maximise genetic gain. All the data has been entered into the evaluation (including the CT data) and one of my favourite ram lambs is the top ram lamb in the country. We will use him ourselves this year, along with a couple of high genetic merit homebred ram lambs and shearlings. Earlier in the month we took blood samples from our Lleyn ram lambs to measure IgA levels, which enables us to select animals with the best worm resistance and is a great advantage of being part of the Performance Recorded Lleyn Breeders (PRLB) group. Both rams we bought this year have high EBVs in their IgA levels and I am excited to see how their progeny perform. This is a very exiting trait and I think vitally important to the industry, and it is great (PRLB) are gathering so much data to enable this.
End of the year comment: The NSA Next Generation programme has been extremely enjoyable and valuable. I have taken huge amounts of knowledge from each session and always found myself looking forward to next one. Over the year we had some fantastic speakers and visited some thought-provoking farmers. It was not just the systems, but the mindset of these farmers that was great to witness and has changed how I approach our farm, hurdles I come across, and plans for the future. I feel I have learned so much and have really developed my thinking and understanding. One of my favourite sessions focussed on the supply chain. We started at Marc Jones’ farm looking at grazing management and farm business. There was so much to take on and it really was a next level farm. We then had talks from AHDB looking at genetics and the marketing of lambs followed by an interesting visit to an abattoir.
