Andrew Doyle is a fourth-generation farmer at Coolbawn near Aughrim, Co. Wicklow. He works the forestry full time and runs the farm part-time — the family pitch in at weekends when the kids are off school. The ground is a mix of lowland and hill that goes, in his own words, from very good to very poor. His flock is mostly mules with a few pure Swaledales, and the sheep spend four to five months of the year on the mountain full time. He sources his Natural Stockcare products through Tirlán FarmLife.
On a part-time mountain farm, products need to work and they need to be easy to use. Andrew has been using Twin Plus and Cobalt B12 for at least ten years, possibly fifteen — and in that time his lamb percentage has gone from 1.2 to 1.8 lambs weaned.
Twin Plus: A Game Changer at Tupping and Lambing
Twin Plus is the product Andrew calls a game changer.
He doses three weeks before the ewes go to the ram. It helps bring up body condition ahead of tupping and covers the trace element gaps on his farm — selenium, cobalt, and copper are all low on the ground at Coolbawn.
The results speak for themselves. “We raised our lamb percentage from 1.2 to 1.8,” he says, “and that’s lambs weaned, not lambs scanned. So we had a great amount of lambs when they hit the ground. They were still alive when we were able to sell them.”
That is a significant shift on any farm. On a mountain farm where every lamb matters, it changes the economics of the enterprise.
“That has been a big game changer,” he says. “Ewe health went up and our crop went up.”
Cobalt B12: The First Product That Started It All
Cobalt B12 was the first Natural Stockcare product Andrew used. On cobalt-deficient hill ground, lambs can quietly underperform through the grazing season without ever looking dramatically ill — subclinical deficiency costs money long before clinical signs show up.
“Great product,” he says. “Very good with the lambs.”
It was Cobalt B12 that opened the door. After seeing what it did for his lambs, Andrew got talking to a Natural Stockcare rep and tried Twin Plus. The combination has been in his programme ever since.
Easy Products to Use and Administer
On a part-time farm where most of the work happens at weekends with family, practicality matters as much as formulation. A product that’s awkward to dose — thick, prone to blocking the gun, wasteful — costs time that isn’t there.
“It flowed through the gun very easy,” Andrew says. “You don’t want to be messing around and spilling stuff and using up stuff. So it all worked very well.”
Fifteen Years and Counting
Andrew doesn’t overthink it. He has used the same products for the best part of fifteen years because they keep doing what they did the first time.
“Every time we’ve used it, it worked. We haven’t had a problem with it. It just does the job. And that’s as simple as that.”
If you’d like to find out more about Twin Plus or Cobalt B12 for your own flock, get in touch with the Natural Stockcare team or visit the full Natural Stockcare product range.
