Ultrasound pregnancy scanning is now an essential tool for total ewe management; ensuring better survival rates for your lambs, more precise feed allocation, and improving the overall wellbeing and milk production in your ewes.
Increase production and profitability
The importance of scanning your ewes
Pregnancy scanning is being adopted by a growing number of producers because it allows them to target the nutrition of their ewes more accurately. Identifying empty, single-, twin-, and even triplet-bearing ewes allows targeting of specific nutritional requirements to each group of ewes:
- Dry ewes can be culled from the property as they provide no benefits to lamb production and only compromise feed allocation.
- More feed can be allocated to twin-bearing ewes, which require more feed than those of their single-lambing counterparts. Increasing their feed will ensure higher birth weights for twin lambs, improving lamb survival rates.
- Improve feed management for ewes bearing a single cross-bred lamb (e.g. larger British breed sire to a merino ewe). Reducing ewe feed requirements during the last 6 weeks of gestation can reduce birth complications (e.g. over-sized lamb) and minimize the risk of ewe and/or lamb mortality.
For further information read "The value of pregnancy scanning - should I do it?" on the CRC Sheep website to learn more about the benefits of pregnancy scanning.
The equipment
We own and operate two BCF ultrasound pregnancy scanning units, and offer services statewide. Ultrasound scanners provide a two dimensional image of the lamb foetus within the uterus. This enables us to determine if the ewe is dry or in lamb. In addition, we can also detect if the ewe is in lamb with twins or triplets, and can even group ewes that became pregnant early or late during the joining period.