Weaning breaks the single most protective relationship in a sheep flock, and the weeks that follow it produce a mortality pattern every flockmaster recognises. Weaned lamb fallen stock collection is a routine autumn requirement across the hill and upland flocks of Lancashire, Cumbria and North Wales, and the losses are rarely dramatic enough to prompt a vet visit until they have quietly added up. Martlands is a family-run, DEFRA approved operator based in Burscough providing licensed fallen stock and ABP collection across the North West, and September and October bring a steady flow of small-carcass collections from flocks working through the store period.
This article sets out what kills weaned lambs in the autumn, why small and frequent losses are easy to mishandle administratively, and how to keep a flock’s disposal record defensible when the animals concerned are individually low in value.
The Autumn Losses in a Weaned Group
Parasitic gastroenteritis is the largest single cause. Lambs weaned onto pasture already grazed by lambs that season meet a heavy larval challenge with no maternal protection and limited acquired immunity. Nematodirus, Teladorsagia and Haemonchus each produce their own pattern, and the outcome is scouring, condition loss and, in the animals furthest behind, death. Coccidiosis persists into the autumn on heavily stocked ground. Pasteurellosis kills suddenly in apparently thriving lambs, often in the week after a move or a handling. Clostridial disease claims unvaccinated animals and, in flocks where the vaccination interval has slipped through a busy summer, vaccinated ones as well.
Trace element deficiency, particularly cobalt on the sandy and peaty ground common across west Lancashire and the mosslands, produces the chronic ill-thrift that turns into mortality when combined with a worm burden. None of these causes is exotic. What they share is that they take individual animals over a period of weeks rather than a group at once.
Why Small Losses Are the Ones That Get the Records Wrong
The regulatory position does not scale with the value of the animal. Under the Animal By-Products (Enforcement) (England) Regulations 2013 a dead store lamb must be collected within twenty-four hours of discovery exactly as a dairy cow must, and on-farm burial and burning have been unlawful in the United Kingdom since 2003. The temptation on a hill flock is to leave a lamb where it lies until the next gather, or to hold several until it seems worth ringing about. Both are breaches, and both show up as a mismatch between the flock’s recorded mortality and the collections evidenced.
Fallen sheep are handled as Category 1 material on specified risk material grounds, and our Category 1 ABP collection service is licensed for that material under Animal By-Products Licence No APB/CCN21/373/8002. The BSE sampling requirement applies to fallen cattle over forty-eight months rather than to sheep, but the collection and documentation route is the same.
Making Frequent Small Collections Workable
The practical answer on a flock losing lambs steadily is a scheduled collection rather than a series of individual calls. A regular route visit through the store period allows losses to be presented in a way that is both compliant and efficient, provided the animals are held correctly between discovery and collection. That means a covered, secure point where foxes, corvids and other sheep cannot reach the carcasses and where run-off cannot reach a ditch, and it means the point being reachable by a vehicle in autumn conditions.
Bookings placed through the KoLeCt system record the date of each report against your holding, so a scheduled arrangement still produces the individual timestamps that demonstrate the duty was met. Our note on safe on-farm storage of fallen stock covers how to build a collection point that works through the winter.
Mortality Figures and Farm Assurance
Autumn lamb losses feed directly into the flock mortality figure an assurance assessor will look at, and into the health plan review that follows it. A flock that records its losses honestly, disposes of them lawfully and can show the Commercial Documents to match is in a strong position even where the figure is higher than it would like. A flock that under-records is not, and the gap between the number of lambs weaned and the number sold is not difficult for an assessor to work out.
Each collection produces a Commercial Document recording the category of material, the number and species of animals, the date, the vehicle and the receiving premises. Our guidance on preparing for a Red Tractor assurance audit explains how those documents are read against the rest of the flock record.
Upland Access Through the Autumn
Store lambs are often on the least accessible ground a holding farms, and autumn weather closes tracks that carried a vehicle easily in July. The realistic arrangement on fell and moorland ground is that carcasses are brought down to a fixed roadside point rather than collected from where they were found. Our routes serve the Bowland and Pendle fringe through Clitheroe fallen stock collection, the southern Lakes through Kendal fallen stock collection, and the wider North Wales fallen stock collection hill country, and in each case the collection point matters more than the field.
Arranging Collection
To set up a scheduled arrangement for the store period, or to book a collection now, call 01704 776977 or use the contact us page. Our farm and fallen stock collection service covers flocks of every size, from a handful of ewes on a smallholding to several thousand on the fell, and same-day collection is available where a loss cannot wait for a scheduled visit. As NFSCO members we can also take collections placed through the national scheme.
