Evidence based farm decisions for lamb production (PhD)

Summary

This project has contributed to an improved understanding of the associations between sheep productivity and specific factors and management strategies in UK commercial sheep farms selling the whole, or part, of the lamb crop for meat directly to an abattoir. In this research, different metrics of sheep productivity were used (i.e. number of lambs sold for meat per ewe per year per farm; financial return from lamb sales per year per farm; lamb weight), allowing the identification of factors with a relationship with productivity at flock and at lamb levels. The results of this research have highlighted the importance of the integrated management of health and nutrition of a sheep flock, with disease control practices being identified as important throughout this thesis. Grassland management practices also appeared to play a key role in productivity, but these were evaluated only in one of the studies in this research, and therefore a detailed assessment of these relationships is suggested for future research. Interestingly, flock size had no clear relationship with flock productivity, indicating that both small and large farms can have high levels of productivity.

Importantly, this research resulted in the identification of a set of management strategies with a positive relationship with productivity that are likely to be implementable on most of sheep farms, and the incorporation of other less mutable factors, such as type of breed used, farm location or farmer demographic aspects, aided explaining variability between enterprises. One implementable practice in most of the flocks is the collection of more frequent and accurate flock records; it was interesting to observe that an association between better recording practices and greater productivity was present throughout this thesis. This work also suggested that farmer attitudes appear to have a role in driving productivity, and also as motivators and barriers for adoption of agricultural precision tools. Finally, this thesis provided information on the impact of disease in ewes and lambs on lamb growth, which may be useful to prioritise the diseases to control with the greatest impact on lamb production.

In summary, this work has made a significant contribution to the expansion of current knowledge of factors influencing the productivity of UK commercial sheep farms. It is hoped that the identification of such factors will ultimately be helpful to improve the economic sustainability of sheep flocks in the UK and worldwide.

Sector:

Beef & Lamb

Project code:

61110038

Date:

01 October 2016 - 30 September 2019

AHDB sector cost:

£69,327

Total project value:

£69,327

Project leader:

University of Nottingham

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About this project

The Project

This project aims to understand the main factors influencing commercial lamb production of farms in England and Wales. For this, we will use agri-informatics data on a variety of farming practices from around 800 farms, that supply lamb on a deadweight basis. Further information will be collected from a subset of these farms in greater detail for a period of 18 months.

Data will be collected on farm and farmer characteristics (i.e. size and type of sheep enterprise, farmer beliefs and motivations), husbandry practices at key times in the production cycle, flock health and disease prevention practices (i.e. vaccination, biosecurity) and this information will be linked to the profile of lambs received by the abattoir.

These factors will be considered holistically to contribute to understanding the main reasons for the differences between sheep flock economic success. We will use modelling techniques to identify most influential factors related to farm productivity. Farmer beliefs and attitudes also play an important role in farming practices in, for example, the uptake of innovative practices and technologies or the application of new scientific knowledge by farmers. We will integrate this information in our analysis.

In summary, our goal is to identify farm-level, sheep-level and farmer attitudinal factors that are associated with more profitable lamb production systems.

The Student

Eliana Lima, University of Nottingham