Sheep TMR bolstered by home-grown beans

Feeding a TMR to sheep based partly on home-grown beans has helped cut costs, improve animal health and meet sustainability goals on Myerscough College farms.

The farms at Myerscough College are on a mission to produce more home-grown feed. They are particularly focused on cutting down soya and replacing it with proteins that can be grown across the college farms, and are keen for this to link with the key college goals. These require the business to farm sustainably, to drive efficiency and profitability, and to keep the production of food at its heart.

Switching the sheep flocks on to a total mixed ration (TMR) has been an integral part of this drive and dovetails with the introduction of field beans to the arable rotation. With 750 acres (303ha), mostly rented from the Duchy of Lancaster across three farms – Lodge Farm, Lee Farm and Light Ash Farm – stretching north of Preston towards the Wyre Valley, there is ample scope to expand the rotation.

The beans were harvested with a maize header on the forager, in line with recommendations from feed and forage preservation specialists at Kelvin Cave. Technical director, Michael Carpenter, says the company has been working with beans for several years, latterly as part of its involvement with the Innovate UK-sponsored Nitrogen Climate Smart (NCS) Project, whose mission is to displace imported soya.

He says: “We have undertaken trials into harvesting as well as preserving whole crop beans and the Krone XCollect maize header we trialled came out as significantly more efficient in terms of dry matter harvested, fuel use and field losses when compared with a disc-mower type wholecrop header. The wholecrop header still worked reasonably well, but the standard grass silage pick-up proved unsuitable in our trials.”

Also advised to treat the crop with the preservative, Safesil Pro, to chop very small, consolidate well and sheet with an oxygen-impermeable membrane (they used the seven-layer product, Farmguard), the team members wanted to do everything by the book.

“Achieving a rapid fermentation and a stable silage is important and excluding air is a particular challenge with a stemmy crop like beans,” remarks Michael, who says the preservative will drive a rapid pH drop and a favourable fermentation, minimise nutritional losses and prevent aerobic spoilage, even when the clamp is opened.

The team were pleased their attention to detail – and that of their contractor, Wilsons – paid off, which could clearly be seen when they opened the clamp in February 2026. “We were really surprised by how good it looked,” says Ben. “It was even better than the forage on the stand!”

“We used our common sense and took the best advice we could and we are really pleased the forage has been consistently good,” adds Ben. “There is no heating and no wastage and we’ve just got to the back of the clamp [May 2026] and even on the back wall there is no waste at all.”

A ration was compiled by Stephen, who removed every purchased ingredient, except for minerals and molasses, and focussed on what was available on the farm. “It was lucky the farm also had crimped wheat in store as this is a high energy feed which is exceptional for rumen health and complements the beans really well,” he says. “I think the success of this ration is as much down to the crimp as the beans.”

The final ration is shown below (kg/head/day freshweight).

In fact, the team only put a toe in the water when it came to feeding the new TMR, as they wanted to closely monitor the effects of removing all soya – previously in the ewe nuts – from the ration. Initially feeding the new ration to just 130 twin-bearing ewes, it was only offered later to all the farm’s 1,300 ewes.

With lambing starting on 1 March and extended over 10 weeks to maximise learning opportunities for students, Ben was able to test some key parameters before fully committing. “A particular concern was colostrum quality, so we tested this with a Brix refractometer and found it was completely unchanged compared with ewes on the old ration,” he says.

With this reassurance, Stephen moved the whole flock on to the TMR, either two weeks, six/seven weeks or eight/nine weeks before lambing, depending on whether they were carrying singles, twins or triplets respectively. The only vestige of the past was a ewe nut, fed for 24-48 hours alongside the TMR during individual penning at the time of lambing. Within a day, ewes were mostly moved to the nursery group and fed only TMR, and then on to grass with no concentrates outside.

“The condition of the ewes this year has been so much better in terms of wool and skin appearance, but more importantly in the lack of twin lamb disease,” adds Ben. He says this typically occurs five weeks before lambing, by which time those carrying multiple lambs would have been on the TMR for several weeks. “An improvement in the flock’s age profile may also have helped with this but we went from having 23 cases of twin lamb disease last year to none at all this year,” he says.

Also remarking on the ease of managing the flock when fed the TMR, Andrea observes: “In the lambing shed the atmosphere has been so relaxed – there’s none of the hustle-bustle you have when feeding concentrates and less feed fence is needed when you’re feeding an ad lib TMR which is useful with our limited space.” Pushing the ration up regularly is also said to be essential, which Ben says is done virtually every time they walk through the shed, whether day or night.

Once out at grass – around five days after lambing – the calm remains, as high protein diverse swards have been created for ewes and lambs and no concentrate is fed. “There is no mismothering and you can go into the field and actually check the sheep as they are not piling towards you,” says Ben. “We’ve abandoned using the snacker.”

Lambs will be finished on grass and grazed forage such as hybrid rape and turnips without any concentrate, although it’s too early to give growth rates under the new, no-concentrate regime. “In previous years too many lambs have been finished on concentrates or sold as stores,” Andrea says. “This year lambs are growing faster and we expect sales to be earlier than last year.”

As pre-lambing concentrates have been dropped and the ration changed, an analysis of costs has been undertaken. This shows that feeding a partial TMR reduced the feed cost in 2025, but when the beans and crimped wheat were added and soya removed in 2026, this came down further. At today’s prices, this dropped from £4,353 (for sheep cobs and haylage) to £2,756 (full TMR), based on 800 twin-bearing ewes in the 14-day run-up to lambing. This represents an impressive 37% cut in costs.