Australia-Improving lambing percentages.

AUSTRALIA-LAMBING TIME.

Lambing. percentages are the major driver of profitability in prime lamb businesses, but a couple of years ago Dugald McLachlan, Nangwarry Station, realised he had a problem with large losses in some mobs between scanning and lamb marking.

"You expect to lose 30 per cent, but we were losing in excess of that and we weren’t finding dead lambs in the paddock, so they were being reabsorbed or aborted well before we could detect it," Dugald said.

In 2008, all Nangwarry Station’s 3300 ewe lambs were vaccinated with Coopers Guardian and they achieved 110pc, but there was a disastrous result, with their 1.5-year-olds only producing 80pc.

"It seemed to fix it in the ewe lambs we got used to getting 70-80pc but last year we had 110pc in our ewe lambs."

Dugald plans to protect his entire late July-August lambing, Multi-Meat and Merino-Border Leicester ewe flock, totalling 8000 head, this year.