Sheep Feedlot Update – The Pieper Family

June 11, 2021

The Pieper family farm at Manypeaks, east of Albany. They crop 4,000 hectares and run 4,000 mated ewes. They were tired of selling their lambs to a feedlotter to finish for processing so decided to build a lamb feedlot where they could finish their lambs in-house. In their first season, they used a locally made pellet but didn’t get the growth rates and lost a number of lambs to acidosis. They are now utilising the new Milne Tenterden depot and have 2,000 lambs currently on LambGro®. Dylan Pieper (pictured above) said they haven’t lost a single lamb and are surprised how quickly they have finished.

'They have got to 60kgs really quickly', he said.

They plan to trade and finish lambs after finishing their own and prefer the idea of a complete pelletised ration instead of home mixing. They are keen to hold barley at harvest and offset their 2022 pellet requirements. They have plans to utilise the same feedlot to confinement feed ewes in autumn and will build their own self-feeders. They also hope to install load cells on their chaser bin so they can weigh LambGro® into the feeders to get a more accurate cost of live-weight.

Lambs in the photo below are just on 60kgs live-weight and are pictured after a recent rain event of 20mm.

Sheep in feedlot