Janet McNally was a featured keynote speaker during a series of Livestock Grazing Conferences held around New York State from February 5-8th. Janet raises sheep in Hinckley, Minnesota and her presentation detailed how she has used to pasture to lower her costs as a part of a complete management system. From lambing, to finishing animals, and to maintaining dry ewes, Janet described the important role pasture plays in her operation.

Janet began lambing on pasture as a way to shift the labor needs for her flock. She taught a sheep production course for adults as a part of the vocational school program and had a flock of around 100 ewes of her own. She had been managing the sheep on an accelerated lambing program that included a January lambing that conflicted when she was needed to help her students with their lambing. She decided to shift the lambing to May so that it wouldn't conflict and she found that she started making money.

Janet now employs drift lambing on pasture. She aims to lamb on the edge of spring and summer which, for her, is around May 10th. Before lambing, she grazes all of the paddocks quickly twice to get on top of the explosive spring flush grass growth. This way, the grass will be growing at a rate that will be allow the ewes enough grass while lambing and minimize clipping.

Drift lambing involves drifting still pregnant ewes out of a paddock every few days and leaving ewes that have lambed behind. Generally, she ends up with around 5 ewes/acre or around 15-21 per paddock, and around 14-15 paddocks. The ewes stay in the same paddock with their lambs for 30-50 days. By leaving the ewes and their lambs in the same paddock for that period of time, there is less likelihood of lambs getting orphaned. Lambing on pasture also reduces the stress level of the ewes since they have plenty of space to have their lambs away from the rest of the flock.

The main challenges to lambing on pasture are weather and predators. Newborn lambs are particularly susceptible to inclement weather especially if it is cold and raining. Janet has tents that she uses to provide shelter for lambs when weather is bad and also has developed some special protocols involving dextrose and warming to use when lambs get chilled. Predators are a big problem for Janet as she has to contend with both coyotes and wolves. She deals with them by using guard dogs from crosses of several different breeds including Anatolian, Marmma and Tatra. Through careful training, Janet has been very satisfied with the performance of the guard dogs.

Janet likes drift lambing because it allows her to focus her predator and newborn management. Newborn lambs are especially vulnerable to predation and hypothermia in the first few days of her life. With drift lambing, she can allocate guard dogs and manage lambs in poor weather more easily since the newest born lambs are separated from older ones. Another common form of pasture lambing, set stocking, spreads out newborns over many paddocks making this kind of focussed management more difficult.

After 30-50 days of staying in one paddock after lambing, Janet combines the ewes and their lambs into two big groups and begins rotationally grazing. She separates ewes with triplets from those with only singles or twins and allows the triplet group access to pasture first and then follows with the other group. She aims for a density of around 125 ewes per acre since this level of density leads to good grazing pressure.

Janet has found having a 20 cow Charolais x Angus herd of beef cows to be a key to both parasite and grass management on pasture. Sheep are very sensitive to parasites and the level of parasites on pastures grazed by sheep build up through time. Since cattle and sheep are not susceptible to the same parasites, alternating cattle and sheep grazing can help lower the parasite load. This is only effective if the grazing is alternated over the course of years so that sheep and cattle do not graze in the same pasture at the same time. Her yearling cattle also are useful for cleaning up overgrown pastures in the late spring. Janet has found that cattle are well suited to this purpose because they have different grass preferences and because they do not disrupt the sheep social order while dry ewes would.

Janet has found that grazing turnips helps get her through the "fall stall" of lamb growth. Her goal is to finish lambs in one growing season without using any grain but she had been unable to do that using her native pastures. Despite the fact that it tests high in forage quality, Janet found that the lambs did not grow well in October in November. The last two years, she has grazed the lambs on turnips with excellent results.

The turnips are seeded into plowed hayfields that need renovation in early July and grazed lightly in late August and September. The lambs then graze them heavily throughout October and November eating all of the turnip tops and some of the roots. The lambs go quite well on turnips as the forage quality is excellent and the forage is quite palatable. Using, turnips, Janet has been able to finish her lambs up to 80-90 pounds the last two years with no grain.

Janet has also been able to reduce cost by extending grazing by her ewes into the winter. She has found that ewes that are in good condition (at least a 3.5 body condition on a five point scale) will do well grazing stockpiled forage even if they need to dig through up to a foot of snow. Actually, Janet has found that 6-8 inches of snow covering 6-10 inches of stockpiled forage growth is ideal as the snow the sheep with all the water they need. Janet has found the key to successful winter grazing is having the right amount of high quality forage underneath the snow for the sheep.

Once the snow is too deep, Janet sets round bales in the pasture and lets the ewes eat them. She has found that the ewes do quite well with this outside feeding and do not waste much feed. There is a bit of wasted forage that serves as a nice place for the ewes to have their lambs in the spring. Also, by feeding hay on the pasture, Janet has noticed a dramatic increase in the fertility of her pastures as they have become lush and dark green after years of feeding.

Janet's program of lambing on pasture and extending her grazing in the fall has allowed her cut costs and handle more sheep with capital costs. She calculated that she is able to raise a lamb from birth to 80 pounds for only $10 on this system which allows her to make money even when lamb prices are low. Also, by lambing on pasture and out-wintering her ewes, Janet does not need to have much barn space and is able to easily handle her 200 ewe flock by herself. All in all, the switch to pasture-based sheep production has turned out to be the right one for Janet McNally.