This week on the Head Shepherd podcast we have Anne Ridler chatting to Mark about ewe wastage and checking udders post-weaning.

Anne Ridler is an associate professor at Massey University, specialising in sheep and beef. Anne has been in her current role for 11 years, and prior to that was a practising vet.

One of Anne's recent research projects involved checking udders on ewes. The project came about from Anne's interest in ewe wastage. Most farmers will cull on poor udders, but Anne found that most farmers checked and assessed them all very differently, resulting in different levels of culling.

She found that in ewes with bad udders, their lambs would be 3/4 times more likely to die (bad udders being lumps or hardness in the udder).

Between 2% and 8% of ewes have 'dodgy' udders post-lambing, and the best time to check is 4-6 weeks post-weaning, so you can actually see the defects.

Anne's goal was to have a more standardised way of checking udders and culling ewes based on those checks.

Anne's interest in ewe wastage led her to conduct a trial following 13,000 ewe hoggets through to six years of age, monitoring the causes of death over their lifetimes. Only 10% made it to six years old.

This podcast is full of facts and figures and handy hints for sheep farmers around checking udders, reducing lamb losses and ewe wastage. Anne has a lifetime of knowledge to share and, with Mark asking the questions, it's definitely an episode not to miss!

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