Containment pens finishes off lambs to head for the hooks

Kirstie Bertram along with her husband Kane has set up a containment feeding operation within their 2350 hectare property in 2018.

"We set the containment pens up in 2018 to feed our lambs and ewes during the drought to avoid selling our main line of ewes," she said.

"At seven months old, our lambs go into the containment pens to be fattened.

"We fatten them to hook them for our wethers but our hoggets were locked up on oats to save the paddock feed.

"The ewe market wasn't going to give us the returns we were after so we held all our old ewes which in turn ran where we would have put our hoggets."

Mr Bertram said the wethers are dropped in April and May and head into the containment in November for three months.

"They were fed barley and nuts - a grain balancer pellet from Laucke Mills - at a ratio of 600 kilograms of barley to 30kg of grain balancer," he said.

"They eat as much as they want once they are weaned on, I have them on hole two in the Sharman feeder.

"I also give them straw and work on about 1.8kg of feed per day.

"So they get 1.4kg of barley and nuts and then .4kg of straw - and I top the feeders up once every two weeks."

He said when they were processed they had a dressed weight of 26.8kg in Merino wethers and 28.9kg in crossbreds and he recorded a 59.3kg average live weight.

Determining the location for a containment pen was a decision which involved many factors for Vale Spring's Kane and Kirstie Bertram, Eurelia.

The pens were designed to hold 400 head in each of the two of the pens and then a further 170 head in a third pen.

Mr Bertram said they selected the area they did due to its proximity to the shearing shed.

"But also it has a natural fall of the land, which was perfect because it runs everything off," she said.

"We worked out that was probably the best spot as it was close to water, because I already had water at the shearing shed and so it wasn't too hard to pump it up.

"The water is 900 parts (salinity) - so it's really good quality."

He said they planted saltbush the whole way around the containment pens with a focus on the west side.

"We are still planting more trees now around the individual pens as we only did the whole way around the pens together," he said.

"The row of trees in the middle will give them shelter.

"We used straw with panels around them initially for shade and it think we will leave them in there as the sheep are always sitting around them for shade in the afternoon."

The containment yards were fitted with sweep out troughs which made for easier cleaning.

Mr Betrum said there was no bung so the troughs had a ramp at the end.

"So all you do is sweep it out the broom and you don't have to undo bungs or anything," he said.

"They're only shallow so you don't have them real deep like you would a normal paddock trough.

"For ease, it's only a two minute job to sweep it out each day.

"And after it rains you'd just go along with a screwdriver to clean out the feed in the feeder shoots to make sure the water drains away."

Mr Bertrum said if he had his time over he would have planted more trees from the get go.

"And I would have also concreted under the troughs as the sheep dig around the bottoms of them out," he said.

Ms Bertram said they would use posts instead of droppers to provide the containment pens added strength.

"Kane has double droppers happening in some spots where a dropper had been broken," she said.

"The sheep like to push against them and they bend them.

"They'd probably still push against the posts but they can break a dropper easily."

"We purchased the property in 2015 from Kane's uncle and aunty and have experienced a drought early on.

"It was a very steep learning curve."