LTEM: Setting your ewes up for success
Good conception and lamb marking rates are key to a successful sheep business. Find out how you can maximise lamb numbers by joining a Lifetime Ewe Management (LTEM) group in your area.
Being involved in an LTEM course gives you the skills and support to make feeding and managing your ewes easier. Working with groups of 5-7 farmers who meet six times in 12 months, your trainer, an experienced sheep consultant, will work with you to:
- Learn how to condition score
- Prepare ewes for joining
- Manage single and twin-bearing ewes at different stages of their reproductive cycle
- Assess pasture and calculate supplementary feeding rates
- Set up lambing paddocks
- Form weaning strategies to maximise weaner survival and improve lifetime productivity
- Set targets for condition score, conception, lamb survival, ewe mortality, lamb growth rate and feed on offer.
More than 5,000 Australian producers have taken part in LTEM, representing 30% of the national flock. On average, producers increase stocking rate by 9.3%, marking and weaning rates by 7%, and reduce ewe mortality by 25%.
An independent assessment of all the Australian sheep industry's sheep reproduction extension activities concluded that the LTEM program was the one that has had the most influence on sheep reproduction efficiency. The study estimated the benefit/cost ratio of the program was 8.5.
LTEM was developed using research outcomes of the AWI-funded Lifetime Wool project (www.lifetimewool.com.au), which ran from 2001 to 2008, and involved growers and researchers in WA, Vic, NSW and SA.
The cost of LTEM is $2,450 plus GST per participant. AWI offers eligible woolgrowers a subsidy of $900 bringing the course cost to $1,550 plus GST per participant.
More information: www.wool.com/LTEM
This article appeared in the September 2024 edition of AWI’s Beyond the Bale magazine. Reproduction of the article is encouraged.
