Sheep

Farmers are being reminded to treat all sheep returning from grazing with a group 4 wormer and quarantine the animals to avoid bringing resistant worms onto farms.

The National Sheep Association (NSA) regarded former Defra advisor Ben Goldsmith’s comments on sheep farming in the UK as ‘naïve’ and ‘uneducated’ in a statement issued to defend the valuable role sheep fulfill in the UK countryside.

The latest round of the Rural Payments Agency’s (RPA) Farming Equipment and Technology Fund (FETF) offers grant funding for a range of equipment, including mobile sheep handling and herd monitoring systems, with MSD Animal Health also offering support to improve flock productivity.

Sheep farmers could soon see a fair price being paid for their wool if the wider horticulture industry is to adapt the revolutionary practice of Gwinllan Conwy vineyard, where sheep fleeces are being used to ripen grapes more fully and create higher quality wines.

The Sustainable Control of Parasites in Sheep (SCOPS) group is encouraging sheep farmers to use the monitoring of ewe body condition score as a practical step to significantly reduce how many doses of wormer are administered this lambing season.

Having found a shared ambition for farming when they met on a dating app, Abbie Bryant and Andy Moye are coming to the end of their first year as full-time farmers – and it’s been a challenging introduction to say the least.

An uproar among both farmers and farming organisations followed Aldi’s decision to abandon its longstanding pledge to only stock meat reared on British farms, with the consensus being the move couldn’t have come at a worse time for lamb producers.

The value of UK red meat exports has reached record levels in 2022, amounting to a staggering £1.7 billion, partly due to the rising prices of meat throughout last year.

Breeders of pedigree terminal sires are being encouraged to nominate their rams to join RamCompare for the 2023 breeding season, with successful applicants benefitting from integrated data from a wider range of sources.

AHDB has produced its latest Agri-market Outlook, which explores the factors likely to affect farm businesses.

As forecast, cases of disease due to liver fluke have remained relatively low so far this winter however, there are reports of both acute and chronic disease in some areas of the UK.

A funded yearly vet visit is now available to farmers under the government’s Animal Health and Welfare Pathway.