Woolless
Member
- Location
- Berwickshire, Scottish Borders
We are talking about a select few but they're not like Halley's comet!
Breeding your own replacement ram.
- Thread starter Guiggs
- Start date
JD-Kid
Member
- Location
- Akaroa.. New Zealand
ummm i'd sooner have a good set of twins not alot of point breeding work
Guiggs
Member
- Location
- Leicestershire
Surely numbers are determined by the ewe, by the number of eggs she produces to be fertilized where as the sex is decided by the Y chromosome carried by the male!
JD-Kid
Member
- Location
- Akaroa.. New Zealand
yea like this http://www.genomnz.co.nz/our-services/booroola/
In a small flock maybe, but would come across such animals far more regularly in a larger flock of course.......
no, less often again in smaller flocks given the in built prejudice against them in EBVs.
- Location
- Derbyshire
But her genes will be passed to her son too. It fully depends if it is a maternal or terminal male progeny you are after.
For you, triplets would be kiss of death. I believe the new Lleyn Index rewards 'twinning' as litter size is taken into account. This is a real strength in the breed I think.
Guiggs
Member
- Location
- Leicestershire
- Location
- Ceredigion, wales
Litter size used to be a huge problem within the lleyn breed. A farm near here used to keep them and although they would scan at around 200% there could be lots of singles as well as triplets quads and even quins.
Guiggs
Member
- Location
- Leicestershire
I'm quite lucky with mine in that they don't have many trips, there's actually a bit of room to increase lambing % without increasing number of triplets.
I guess if you're properly geared up for rearing them then triplets aren't necessarily a bad thing!
I guess if you're properly geared up for rearing them then triplets aren't necessarily a bad thing!
- Location
- Derbyshire
One of the simplest pieces of data that could be taken on any farm is growth rate. You'd be amazed how many people say that they don't have time to record individual birth dates etc..... you don't need to.
Simply have a blackboard in the lambing shed and try to remember to write on the board what lamb you have got to at the end of each day. If you forget for a few days, it doesn't matter.... just do it when you think about it. When you are drafting lambs, you can then work out your growth rates and compare them year on year, or breed by breed or even ram by ram.
You should also keep a tally of 'wet deaths' and 'dry deaths' and you can start to see where the problems are arising. Is it at birth or simply pre weaning. This is all simple stuff and is totally practical for every commercial lowland farm.... assuming you pick up the dead lambs that is.
Simply have a blackboard in the lambing shed and try to remember to write on the board what lamb you have got to at the end of each day. If you forget for a few days, it doesn't matter.... just do it when you think about it. When you are drafting lambs, you can then work out your growth rates and compare them year on year, or breed by breed or even ram by ram.
You should also keep a tally of 'wet deaths' and 'dry deaths' and you can start to see where the problems are arising. Is it at birth or simply pre weaning. This is all simple stuff and is totally practical for every commercial lowland farm.... assuming you pick up the dead lambs that is
.Vets reckon it's about 10% heritable from the male which doesn't sound much but mounts up over time.
- Location
- Derbyshire
That is the same heritability whether it is from the male or female. It is because you can only measure the trait in a particular ram's daughter after she has had her offspring so you are at least one generation away. To put that in perspective, highly heritable traits like growth and muscling would only be 30-40% and these can, of course, be measured in the direct offspring of a mating.
I'd say that 10% for a maternal trait is good and definitely worth breeding for.
spin cycle
Member
- Location
- north norfolk
what @Sandpit Farm said...plus i'm after increasing my prolificacy....plus a decent wilt can rear three
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
Agreed, but some breeders have possibly gone too far to drive prolificacy down, and avoid triplets altogether? I know of someone that was very big on Lleyns, but has now changed over to Romneys as the prolificacy of his Lleyns was dropping every year (Rams bought from a breeder doing as above), getting down to 160% scanning was the final straw IIRC.
I know he would have been buying on ebv's, but whether he was taking full account of litter size ebv, I don't know.
In a modern Lleyn, personally I wouldn't be looking for a negative litter size ebv, unless I was looking to reduce lambing %age significantly from 200.
Yes. Any breed that requires negative flushing is a pain in the arse unless you live in the barren East.
polk_farmer
Member
- Location
- South West (Gods Country)
Off on a tangent abit, but how successful have people been cross breeding Lleyns to have a more consistent twinning, (instead of trips and singles), yet still maintain a decent lambing %? Were trying to incorporate NZ texel into the mix, partly for this reason among others. But has anyone had any good results? Sorry to hijack
JD-Kid
Member
- Location
- Akaroa.. New Zealand
seem to recall a fella on another forum says it was close to nothing as a trate not sure on that tho
bit will say alot of gains just from feeding mateing mangerment and corecting min's etc
I know a Lleyn breeder who tried that. This year he scanned and sold his triplets and quads. There's a market for them on social media apparently.
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
The guy I mentioned used NZ Texels for a couple of years. He reckoned his NZ Texel crosses weighed 2kg heavier at weaning, than the pure Lleyns (& certainly looked stronger sheep). Didn't help his lambing percentage though, or make lambing the hoggs any easier. He bought about 300 Romney ewe lambs and a ruck of rams this year IIRC.
- Location
- north Wales
It's early days, but this year I had 1 set of triplets and good amount of twins from lleyn x Aberfield shearling ewes.
The lleyn ewes had roughly 15% triplets and 3 quads from 125 ewes,not flushed. Some people reckon the Aberfield knocks 20% off the scanning rate of the ewes they're crossed with, others have good scans