Dr Gordon Refshauge speaks about the benefits of ‘wet and drying’ ewes and shows how it’s done:

The value of the technique (wet and drying ewes) for producers is to identify which ewes have failed to rear a lamb in the current season.  

Identifying those ewes gives you the chance to improve your flock reproduction rates when you remove them the flock and don’t mate them again.

You don’t need to do an additional mustering if you do it at marking – the ewes are already in the yards.

You draft the lambs away the ewes while you do the lamb marking – then come back to the ewes. Their udders will be fuller with milk and easier to determine if they are rearing lambs.  

It’s a very simple technique. 

Wet ewes – Lambed and rearing lambs

What we can see here in this ewe is residual birth stain. This discolouration is birth stain. The presence of this stain tells me she’s given birth.

I know she’s rearing a lamb – the udder tells me that. But if a sheep had a birth stain with little of no udder at all it would tell me she’d lambed and lost rather than not being pregnant at all.

From back here I can see whether she’s got two functional teats and I can see she’s got milk in this udder. When I put my hand on it I can feel it’s warm.

If I push up into the udder it fills with milk and I can squeeze the teat and strip it off into my hand. I can see she’s got good quality milk which means she’s rearing a lamb or lambs.

Dry ewes – Lambed and lost

This ewe is a ‘lambed and lost’ ewe. Her udder is starting to take up the milk.  There’s nowhere near the volume in the udder. The teats are now darker in colour compared with ewes feeding lambs. They’re starting to accumulate grease from the wool, which implies she hasn’t been suckled.

If she had lambs they’d be keeping the teat clean by suckling.

That’s a blind teat. I can’t get any milk out of that teat.

This one has a tiny bit of watery milk. That’s a good indicator that’s she’s lambed and lost. The milk is not very good quality milk and it’s difficult to get out – it’s another indicator that she’s lambed and lost her lambs.

I can also notice that this ewe is in better condition than the ewes who are feeding lambs. She’s a fat score 4, condition score 3½ . 

She’s heavier in condition compared with the ewes with lambs. This tells me she’s using the pasture to put on body reserve because she’s not putting it into milk.

This ewe has lambed and lost. Again she has lost earlier in the period.  She has very little udder development. She’s taken up all her milk.

If I identify this ewe with a tag or notch in her ear, I’ll give her one more chance.  If she fails again in her life she’ll be culled. Making that decision, to give her one more chance, increases the accuracy of the selection decision.

Lamb mortality is largely environmental – sometimes you need to give the ewe an equal chance. If she fails to rear a lamb again, I’ll make an accurate decision to cull her from the flock. She won’t contribute any more replacement breeders to the system.

The number of lambs weaned will increase over time. The key is to give her a chance and know who she is, so if she fails again I can make an informed decision.

This ewe has very little udder development. There’s a small amount of very watery fluid.  It tells me this ewe was pregnant, but she’s lambed and lost a long time ago.

She’s dried up completely. That’s evidence of very early ‘lambed and lost’.

These ewes lambed in early September – it’s now late October. In that amount of time she’s taken up most of the milk. She’s lambed and lost and looking like a dry sheep.

These ewes were pregnancy scanned and confirmed to be carrying lambs. 

These (dry) ewes here represent the greatest contribution to rearing failure.

About 60% of the lambs which are lost are lost to 27% of the ewes. 

This is the type of ewe who contributes to that mortality in flocks. Finding these ewes is important. 

Now I know she’s lambed and lost I can identify her and remove her from the flock if she fails again. She’s a Merino. She’s a replacement breeder. I’ll give her one more chance.  If she fails, she’s out. And that will significantly increase my weaning rates and reduce lamb mortality over time.

Structural faults

I can see this ewe has one teat that’s larger. That’s going to present a risk to newborn lambs – it’s a bigger teat with not much milk coming out of it.

This other teat here still has some milk coming out. I can see this ewe has functional teats. This (larger) one here is a risk. If the other teat wasn’t working this ewe would be culled.

The ewe has a full udder and the teats are clean. You can see that. She’s rearing a lamb.

But her teats are really large. There’s a structural failure here. Her teats are filling up like a balloon, which means next year her newborn lambs will have a huge challenge trying to get onto her teats. It’s a big risk.  

I’d cull her based on the structural fault. She’s too risky to run in a breeding flock. You might have a good fleece – you could run her as a wether but not as a breeder.