Spring 2022 has been cold and dry, but grass growth continues at UCD Lyons Farm. What’s more, multi-species swards at their experimental sheep platform are proving to boost lamb growth.
UCD is the only third-level Irish university with its own teaching and research farm. This enables students and academics to access large animal and crop enterprises for teaching and research programmes.
UCD’s grass growth rate is close to 40kgDM per hectare per day. And lambs have been grazing perennial ryegrass as well as multi-species swards to help researchers determine which works better. At five weeks old, lambs grazing the latter were weighing an average 17kg as opposed to 15.2kg.
It took four weeks to achieve this result, because ewes and lambs were turned out after the first week. Experimental lambs on multi-species swards were achieving an additional lamb growth rate of more than 60g per day, driven by milk yield/ quality.
The farm has already administered white drench (benzimidazole) to all lambs to control nematodirus, the thread-necked roundworm that infects the small intestine of sheep. It particularly affects lambs in spring.
Meanwhile, the farm has followed its 2021 planting of Redstart on the main grazing platform with the establishment of a new multi-species sward. This is the second year they are reseeding multi-species swards in this manner. The 2021 sward is now grazing ewes with triplets.
So the farm’s decision to follow Redstart with its multi-species swards is an alternative to managing the challenge of controlling weeds without herbicides.