Body condition scoring is a very helpful tool for assessing how your ewes are doing regardless of their breed, live weight, frame, gut fill or stage of pregnancy. This then means you can monitor and preferentially feed tail end ewes or make better culling decisions.
BCS is a fast and easy tool with a range from 1 to 5 from only touching one spot on the sheep: over the spine and short ribs. It is more accurate than weighing or eyeing the animals as wool weight, pregnancy and frame differences don’t affect it.
By body condition scoring and feeding the lower condition ewes preferentially, it has been proven to increase production in multiple ways. It increases lambs weight, kg of lamb weaned/Ha and also number of lambs per Ha. It also condenses lambing time by increasing conception rate.
We recommend BCSing three times yearly, at weaning, pre-tup and scanning, and find it a very valuable tool for boosting productivity.
Beef and Lamb has some very helpful videos on this subject, showing a farm case, how to condition score and how it will boost production, at:
https://beeflambnz.com/knowledge-hub/module/body-condition-scoring-sheep.