Easy Ram Texel on Swale or Blackface

yellowbelly

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
N.Lincs
Not tried either of those crosses but we used some of our commercial Texel tups on some draft Herdwick ewes that we have on some 'very poor' heathland.
Lambed no problem - singles and twins in April.
They look really well now......
20200704_174752.jpg

20200704_174926.jpg
 

Heatgereater

Member
Livestock Farmer
From my experience a swale will lamb any cross put on it without lambing issues even if you get carried away feeding them we score all our Swales for lambing ease and it’s 1s from top to bottom
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
They should be easier to lamb than a standard texel (smaller heads etc) oureasyram sired lambs are out performing UK Tex sired ones on dlwg. All run the same

Out of interest, were the UK Texels used from performance recorded flocks and of a decent index, or just 'market ones', bought on looks?
 

TexelBen

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
North Yorkshire
Out of interest, were the UK Texels used from performance recorded flocks and of a decent index, or just 'market ones', bought on looks?

Neither! 🤣🤣🤣
Bought private from a guy who did a bit of showing *shudder*

We all make mistakes......

One tup makes some decent fat lambs tho, they put on decent weight. The rest were crap 😫

That's why all we buy now are recorded tups, less of a shot in the dark.

The NZ is just behind some Charlie sired lambs, I got that yup from a strange guy down Montgomery somewhere 😝😝😝

Our NZ was chosen on maternal traits, to lift our flock in that direction.
 
Just in my experience, it's down to the recording and ability to do off grass, I'm not keen on caking, the UK Tex I bought seem to be brought up on it
That wasn't the case until relatively recent. Can't remember where I saw it but there was a study showing how Suffolk lambs responded to cake diet much better. Would be different now though, the show has moved on.
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
Just in my experience, it's down to the recording and ability to do off grass, I'm not keen on caking, the UK Tex I bought seem to be brought up on it

I would suggest that’s more a reflection on the rearing & selection systems used by the flocks of origin, rather than which country the genetics came from.
When I used to buy Texels, I only bought from top end of the (then) Sire Reference Scheme. I’ve had a couple of NZ Texels since, and I wouldn’t say that growth rate was in any way spectacular. Nice enough sheep and no complaints on their maternal abilities as mature ewes, but then (aside from increasing lambing issues as they got more pure) I always found the progeny of my UK Texels to be attentive & milky mothers too.

I suspect the performance of NZ Texels would likely be similar to those here that have undergone selection based on recording and CT scanning, and have been reared on forage diets. Their are several doing just that with UK Texel genetics too, but they tend to sell from home so need a bit more searching out.
 

Stockwell

Member
I think the big thing with easy rams Texels is the emphasis they are putting into the maternal aspect. I think they are running between 500-600 pure Texel ewes with hardly any labour which is mad considering what most Texel ewes are like.
 

TexelBen

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
North Yorkshire
I would suggest that’s more a reflection on the rearing & selection systems used by the flocks of origin, rather than which country the genetics came from.
When I used to buy Texels, I only bought from top end of the (then) Sire Reference Scheme. I’ve had a couple of NZ Texels since, and I wouldn’t say that growth rate was in any way spectacular. Nice enough sheep and no complaints on their maternal abilities as mature ewes, but then (aside from increasing lambing issues as they got more pure) I always found the progeny of my UK Texels to be attentive & milky mothers too.

I suspect the performance of NZ Texels would likely be similar to those here that have undergone selection based on recording and CT scanning, and have been reared on forage diets. Their are several doing just that with UK Texel genetics too, but they tend to sell from home so need a bit more searching out.

I agree, I'm not saying they're special because they're from NZ, but they perform well because of the recording, and culling, breeding for certain traits.
The lack of a massive cabbage head is a bonus too.

That's how all my tups are selected now, recorded, forage raised, breeders who seem to have the same ethos as I do, a lot of them are on here 😏
So far it's doing well, they perform as expected.
the ones I bought before look good, but don't perform as well, bad feet, entropian, texel throat.
 
we use this cross.......no probs lambing singles. Depends what you intend to do with the lambs? if selling live you need to make sure the nz tup has a tight skin (not all do).......out of swale ewes the lambs can be quite wooly. we finished a lot as hoggs this year and they had a bit too much wool for live ring by that age......we didn't hand pick our tup though and his skin is too loose (for that job)
 

Moors Lad

Member
Location
N Yorks
we use this cross.......no probs lambing singles. Depends what you intend to do with the lambs? if selling live you need to make sure the nz tup has a tight skin (not all do).......out of swale ewes the lambs can be quite wooly. we finished a lot as hoggs this year and they had a bit too much wool for live ring by that age......we didn't hand pick our tup though and his skin is too loose (for that job)
Useful info (as has been other replies to date!), thanks. Was considering keeping some gimmer lambs as an experiment but I did wonder if as you suggest the lambs may come a bit wooly. Did you sell deadweight? And if so, did they grade OK?
 

Heatgereater

Member
Livestock Farmer
We tend to use the Char as the terminal of choice on the Swales not good enough to be used in Mule breeding just because they take wool off and tend be be bigger and longer to put more from frame into the lambs they produce a consistent R-U grade dead so would imagine the Texel would do the same in dead weight terms
 

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