Woolless
Member
- Location
- Berwickshire, Scottish Borders
Maternal or terminal tup?
Lambing ease gestation length
- Thread starter unlacedgecko
- Start date
Could you tease them and then keep them tight in a small area with the tups...ewe lambs liable to give tups a run around.
- Location
- Fife
Open to ideas
- Location
- Fife
They were teased. They're on daily moves, so pretty small paddocks.
I think they just need mated separately.
Think you're right....ewe lambs harder work for tups than experienced ewes.
Will you run the empty ewe lambs round again as I thought you were happy with their genetics.
Woolless
Member
- Location
- Berwickshire, Scottish Borders
Well an Easycare would be the obvious choice. Southdown lambs have just about the lowest birthweight. I used one on hoggs before and they were very easily born, maybe a little soft? Could just have been the tup. John Scott at Fearn uses them.
CopperBeech
Member
- Location
- A Welsh man lost in England
Mating mixed mobs of ewe lambs and flock age ewes always seems to knock the % on the ewe lambs. They just don’t end up getting entertained by the tup.
Aspiring Peasants
Member
- Location
- North Pennines
Perhaps not running enough tups with them?
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
That's just natural selection in action, "the trash taking itself out" so to speak.
If you mollycoddled them into getting in lamb, then you end up with sheep that fail from a 'bad summer' except there's loads of the baastards.
Sell them to another TFF member, who all claim to have the wettest farm in the UK and fantastic yields
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
That's just natural selection in action, "the trash taking itself out" so to speak.
If you mollycoddled them into getting in lamb, then you end up with sheep that fail from a 'bad summer' except there's loads of the baastards.
Sell them to another TFF member, who all claim to have the wettest farm in the UK and fantastic yields
The ‘bad summer’ those sheep experienced was pretty extreme iirc. Do they really need selecting to get by in a desert situation, which would presumably be different genetics to those that will thrive in Fife, or most of the UK?
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Aspiring Peasants
Member
- Location
- North Pennines
The weather here is very variable, what happens if you select for sheep that thrive in a once every 50 year drought when we get an exceptionally wet summer like 2021? Farm animals have to be farmed not treated like wild animals, that's why agriculture beganThat's just natural selection in action, "the trash taking itself out" so to speak.
If you mollycoddled them into getting in lamb, then you end up with sheep that fail from a 'bad summer' except there's loads of the baastards.
Sell them to another TFF member, who all claim to have the wettest farm in the UK and fantastic yields
- Location
- Fife
Will have myomax carrying easycare ram lambs as a by-product of the inverdale breeding program.
Will probably just use them, then kill or sell them.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Who created the desert?
If they too are going to be there next year, chances of the desert returning are quite high.
We have had a run of 6 "it never does this" summers in a row where we are, these tend to compound if the pasture management doesn't shift according to the reality.
A rising tide lifts all ships.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
No sh!t!
it's not variable here at all
Aspiring Peasants
Member
- Location
- North Pennines
Well if the weathers variable why select based on one extreme?No sh!t!
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
The animals are selecting themselves, based on this opportunity to refine their own genetic base for functionality.
Why would you get in the way of that happening?
Personally I would be working to create a more stable grazing pattern that didn't keep dropping its cherries because of the weather we get, after all, it is the weather we get.
Keeping that old style of pasture management going based on some story about wet summers and easy winters is just fine - I don't have to pay when that story fails to match what happens.
That should be put up in massive letters and neon lights above every livestock farm gate in the Country.
but its basics very basic who the heck in their right (half intelligent) mind could disagree with it.
Aspiring Peasants
Member
- Location
- North Pennines
Well some of us can’t afford that attrition rate. Selection of good breeding stock in the first place is half the battle
- Location
- Fife
I agree entirely. However, summer 22 the grazing management was outwith my control, and distinctly below par.
Empty 2th and above are being sold. Ewe lambs will try again this autumn.
Lack of lambs has cause damage to this year's budget. Will have to adjust accordingly. Such an attrition rate is indicative of breeding up from other people's trash.
Aspiring Peasants
Member
- Location
- North Pennines
That’s what I thought you were doing which seems like common sense. The suggestion all of them should be culled without taking into account the particular circumstances of this year didn’t seem right to me