Lamb Rearing with Milligans Feeds

By Melissa Yockney

Inland from Mt Somers, in the Ashburton Gorge, lies Castle Ridge Station.

This high country property covers approximately 5900 hectares of high altitude land, starting some 700m above sea level . It is exposed, with very little shelter, and a short growing season . Kerry Harmer, along with her husband Paul, farm this land with a herd of approximately 600 Angus beef cattle, and more than 14,000 Merino ewes . Of those ewes, 12,000 are mated to a Poll Dorset ram . While the ewes generally yield a scanning rate of more than 140%, in Mrs Harmer’s own words ‘Merino’s don’t make the best mothers as they don’t count very well!’ And in the somewhat harsh conditions that high country properties like Castle Ridge often get at lambing time, the wee new-borns don’t really stand a chance if mum forgets they exist . Mrs Harmer hated seeing lambs dying for no real reason, so set about finding a solution – and that solution was lamb rearing . She and her team would bucket-feed up to 120 orphaned lambs or lambs of multiples and after many years, in 2012, Castle Ridge Station bought its first automatic lamb feeder . They now operated 3 auto-feeders and rear between 700 to 800 lambs who would otherwise not survive . Castle Ridge Station has used Milligans Multi Milk Replacer, a casein-based product, since they first started lamb rearing . Milligans MMR is suitable for lambs, goat kids, cria and foals (among others) and Mrs Harmer says they have always found it to be really easy to mix and, most importantly, the lambs do well on it . As numbers of lambs at Castle Ridge grew they started to yoghurtise the mix, which she said helped reduce the abomasal bloat risk . With that change to automatic lamb feeders back in 2012 it was decided to move towards a whey product, too . All lambs are still started on the MMR for the first couple of weeks, before moving to the GOmulti product (which is a 50:50 casein/whey blended product) and then onto GOlamb Whey which helps further reduce the instances of lamb bloat . Mrs Harmer says “this works really well for us, and the product is always consistent . ” Along with the milk replacers Castle Ridge Station also uses the Milligans ExcelPlus Colostrum powder . “We have fine-tuned a system which seems to be very good at giving the lambs a really good start to reduce health issues later on . We like the higher IgG level in the Milligans ExcelPlus Colostrum and the fact that I can get it in bulk when needed,” Mrs Harmer said . “Milligans have been great to deal with and we work together to continually see how we can do things better, they are keen to look for solutions and new ideas,” says Mrs Harmer . “We like that the company is NZ owned and operated, and that being local means supply tends to not be an issue . ”

* Bag design may vary from what is shown.