Maternal sheep

pgk

Member
would ye prefer the llyen Rams with the long narrow faces or the ones with the shorter wider heads ?
Definitely the longer narrower faces for easier births. We have just bought a flock of high index texels who have been selected for narrower longer heads and slightly narrower shoulders. The big value of the meat being in the loins and gigots so why have extreme size in heads which go in the bin and shoulders which are a lower value cut. We bought our first texel last year to cover the old ewes as an experiment. You would not believe the trouble we had in finding one with narrower head and shoulders. Only had to pull one, both legs back, all the rest lambed unassisted in the field. One that was pulled was an over fat lleyn ewe. Half breds out of lleyns, easycare and easycare lleyns all look like u grade lleyns with slightly wider head see attached ewe lamb pic.
20170813_152056.jpg
 

Green farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Lads, I got a call from a good friend of mine, has some pedigree Suffolk ram lambs for sale. never had one on the farm before, but my terminal Rams are ageing and need replacing also. Would I be mad to even contemplate throwing one across the mature llyen x ewes for butchers lambs ? Would they be less dopey with the bit of llyen blood in them ?
 

Joe

Member
Location
Carlow Ireland
Lads, I got a call from a good friend of mine, has some pedigree Suffolk ram lambs for sale. never had one on the farm before, but my terminal Rams are ageing and need replacing also. Would I be mad to even contemplate throwing one across the mature llyen x ewes for butchers lambs ?

Lambing outside?
 

hendrebc

Member
Livestock Farmer
Used to lamb a lot of lleyns to suffolks and they cross well on lleyn. Realy well actually ewe lambs especially nice. Half my flock was suff cross lleyn for a long time. Some of the milkiest ewes ive ever come across. Wouldnt use one again though i got fed up trying to fatten them was very difficult without creep and lots of it and they got worse every year. Also issues with overfed rams but those 2 are related i think. A good well bred grass reared suffolk are great on lleyn ewes though (y)
 

Green farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
was it the first cross that was slow fattening or the lambs out of llyen cross suffull ewes ? I'd be thinking of selling everything out of the suffolk and keeping replacements out of the maternal ram
 

hendrebc

Member
Livestock Farmer
Ar the time everything was pretty slow because my llleyns werent the best (much improved now thankfully) the suffolk cross lambs were usually slower than the pure lleyns and the texel cross lambs out of the suffolk ewes. I put that down to the suffolk rams we were buying though. They were usually the overfed showy types that dont function well on grass so the lambs were the same not being great in grass. Until the creep feeders went out after combining then the suffolk cross lambs were doing better than anything else. Odd really it might have been because they were the quietesr ones that didnt run away when they saw feeders being filled i dont know really why they reacted so well to bagged feed and not grass you would think good feed is good feed :scratchhead:
If you could find suffolks that respond well to grass then they would do great as a terminal sire i would expect. Good lleyns would have been a good start too it didnt help then mine were quite small and slow growing back then. The suffolk was used to give my lleyn ewes some size to put texel rams on and then those lambs would grow and fatten really well from big suff cross ewes. I just breed better lleyns now and skip the suffollk part altogether.
 
Definitely the longer narrower faces for easier births. We have just bought a flock of high index texels who have been selected for narrower longer heads and slightly narrower shoulders. The big value of the meat being in the loins and gigots so why have extreme size in heads which go in the bin and shoulders which are a lower value cut. We bought our first texel last year to cover the old ewes as an experiment. You would not believe the trouble we had in finding one with narrower head and shoulders. Only had to pull one, both legs back, all the rest lambed unassisted in the field. One that was pulled was an over fat lleyn ewe. Half breds out of lleyns, easycare and easycare lleyns all look like u grade lleyns with slightly wider head see attached ewe lamb pic.View attachment 567132
Any of your new Texels looking like shedding their wool? I have used a fully shedding Texel on one of my Easycare families with good results, as long as you watch what you keep.
 

hendrebc

Member
Livestock Farmer
Wouldn't a Lleyn warrant something with a bit more shape, for fat lamb production? A Lleyn, like most maternal bred sheep, is hardly the best carcass to start with after all.:scratchhead:
Thats why i imporved my lleyns and just put texel in them straight away now instead of having a flock of suffolk crosses. The suffolks for me were a shortcut to get bigger ewes with more milk for rearing good texel cross lambs. Worked well but wouldnt do it now. The first texel cross lambs are better. But if someone wants to go down the suffolk route it will work :)
 

Keepers

Member
Location
South West
Wouldn't a Lleyn warrant something with a bit more shape, for fat lamb production? A Lleyn, like most maternal bred sheep, is hardly the best carcass to start with after all.:scratchhead:

In theory yes. But the ones we've had were blocky things, lumps of meat. May have had something to do with the quality of the lleyns.
 

hendrebc

Member
Livestock Farmer
All depends on the quality of lleyns and suffolks used. A good lleyn will be better shaped than an average suffolk and a good suffolk will be better ahaped than an average lleyn. I readily admit the lleyns i had back then were pretty poor so a decent suffolk did improve them. I stopped using suffilk when i realised the sufffolk cross ewe lambs were getting worse (shaped and size among other things) than my pure lleyns :eek:
 

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