Shot quickly under the skin behind the ear, the pills skyrocket the ewes into ovulation.
“It’s $6.50 per ewe, thereabouts, but it gets you two lambs where there would have been one and a tighter lambing period, so the cost is worth it,” Mr Holmes said.
The pills — known as Regulin — are sold by Ceva Animal Health.
Ceva representative Tony Warner works with sheep farmers in the northern Victoria and southern NSW region.
“We’ve sold more than 200,000 Regulin pills this season alone in the area,” Mr Warner said.
“It’s used for out-of-season joining. It basically turns a ewe’s season around and makes her think it’s an autumn join.”
The ewes are injected six weeks before being turned out with rams.
“Regulin creates a tighter, more even lambing and it gives farmers 20 per cent more lambs on the ground,” Mr Warner said.
After experiencing success with the relatively new product, Mr Holmes has changed the management system on his Baddaginnie farm to make the most of the more reliable and larger lambing.
“We’ve cut down the paddock size to about six to 10 hectares and we lamb down in smaller mobs because the mothers can be poor counters and leave a lamb behind,” Mr Holmes said.
“We are definitely getting more multiples when using the pill.”
In addition to increasing lamb numbers, the tighter lambing season is a big benefit on Mr Holmes’ farm.
“Previously we’d be getting lambs born from the middle of April all the way to early September, but that’s not the case now,” he said.
In addition, markings in the range of 80 to 100 per cent of the flock had become commonplace.
“In the past if we got 80 per cent of the flock marked we’d throw a party.”
In the middle of October workers on Mr Holmes’ farm were busy going through 1700 ewes on the property, injecting them one by one with the pill.
Six weeks ago 800 ewes received the jab, and in a few weeks another 300 will have to spend their own ten seconds in the automatic sheep handler.
Regulin was developed in Australia by the Victorian Department of Agriculture and has been used extensively in Europe, but is only now gaining recognition in its home country.
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