Blue Faced Texels I'm writing that one downWaste of time, you'll not beat a BFL x Blue Texel
No no, you have to amalgamate (spellchecker) the two names...bluxel?? The colourful way to improve just about everything. And world peace.Blue Faced Texels I'm writing that one down
To answer the last part; Texel for carcase, constitution and hardiness with some maternal ability; charollais for weight, skin and length, also vigour at birth and lambing ease; rouge for frame size and conformation with maternal ability and further lambing ease. We added the rouge blood after working with Texel ✖ charollais and realised that it wasn't going to work the way we wanted on the maternal side in terms of milk and mothering ability as well as ease of lambing. We are happy with the combination of the three breeds, all the lambs pictured have been sold to regular customers.
Hope the reply to @MJT answers your question.
I had done my research before buying one they are known for being good milkers. Iambed a bunch of ewe lambs this year some Texel cross char, some char out of Texel/lleyn, and rouge out of Texel/char, the rouge hoggs were by far the better milkers and mothers. As for hardiness it probably depends on what they are crossed with. I'll take a picture of our rouge ram tomorrow and put it up.
Yeah they are renowned for their good milk. But I have heard horror stories regarding their hardiness... Considering charollais get plenty of that criticism levelled at them, but most (commercial minded) char breeders have moved away from the ultra fine hair red headed types...
The rouge itself is certainly not an outdoor lambing breed neither is the charollais although they can be in the right circumstances but this is the point of a hybrid you can combine breeds to get the traits you want while getting rid of some of their less desirable traits. If you look at the pics you can see that those lambs don't look anything like purebred rouge they have more bone and denser coats from the char and Texel.
Just the six that I was happy with, they have all been bought by farmers who have been buying rams from us for 10-15 years, previously charollais and Texel✖ charollais, I'll have some feedback about these next year.
I take you're point I could put beltex to the tex/char and breed the best lambs possible but it would fall down when it came to the maternal side( keeping a closed flock using three breeds while maintaining maximum carcase quality) I couldn't do this with Texel /beltex/char but I can with rouge instead of beltex.
Admittedly 20 odd years ago, but the Rouges I used certainly didn't have any better milking ability (or persistency) than the Charollais we used at the time. They were also thinner skinned and less easily finished. Perhaps they've changed since then?
I'd suggest it's almost as poor a measure as the placing order in a show ring, even though I suspect most of us will still get swayed by looks.