Pan-Wales Herbal ley project update

Introduction

Crickie, Llangorse is one of Farming Connect’s ‘Our Farms’ Network farms that is participating in the Pan-Wales herbal ley project. The project set-up is outlined here. A 2-ha field was chosen for the project at Crickie that was previously a fodder beet crop.

Two groups of 50 lambs of equal weights were selected on 19 August, 2024 to graze both the control (conventional grass ley consisting of perennial ryegrass, clover blend and timothy) and the herbal ley (14-species mixture) treatments. Ten lambs from each group (average weight of 32 kg) were marked as the lambs to monitor for the grazing period up to 11December, 2024. This allowed the total number of lambs grazing each treatment to be reduced over time according to pasture growth/supply, with the ten monitor lambs for each treatment remaining on the field for the duration.

Data collection included dry matter production and forage quality, liveweight gain measurements, blood sampling (individual trace element profile for each management group) and faecal egg count (FEC) sampling.

Photo 1. Field set-up at Crickie.

Lamb results to-date

Lambs were individually weighed on a regular basis throughout the grazing period. There was no significant difference in lamb weights at the end of the grazing period, with both groups of lambs averaging 44 kg respectively. Figure 1 demonstrates the average weights of both groups of lambs during the grazing period.

Figure 1. Average lamb weight (kg) of both management groups of lambs (red - conventional sward, green - herbal ley).

Dung samples were collected from individual lambs, and pooled for each treatment group (a minimum of 8 individual lambs) to determine the FEC of each management group at regular intervals during the grazing season. The results are presented in Table 1. Lambs were treated during September but did not receive any further wormer treatment beyond this month.

Table 1. Total faecal egg count (FEC) of a pooled group of lambs from both treatments on a monthly basis.

Blood sampling results

Blood samples were taken by the farm’s vet on the start (19 August) and end (11 December) date of the trial in 2024 to identify levels of copper, cobalt and selenium in the blood. There was no significant difference between both groups of lambs, nor was there a difference between the start and end of the grazing season.