Easy ram tups

[gatepost]

Whilst I agree that culling should be pretty ruthless, does the actual %age figure mean much? After years of such ruthless culling on functional/structural traits, there should be far fewer to cull for those issues each year (that's the point of culling them isn't it?).
If selection and culling is on performance too, as I believe it should, what would be the point of culling an animal in the bottom half of a high ranked flock, who may well be still in the top 10-20% of the breed? He will still be an improver in most flocks and likely has something to offer.

If you're only culling a tiny number, in order to maximise sales numbers and keep the shareholders happy, that's a different issue perhaps.

Never thought of myself as a shareholder before

 

[gatepost]

This is a question I wish more ram buyers would ask of their breeders

Quite happy to tell people how many haven't made it and why, problem is ,they often want to buy one of them.

 

[M-J-G]

Whilst I agree that culling should be pretty ruthless, does the actual %age figure mean much? After years of such ruthless culling on functional/structural traits, there should be far fewer to cull for those issues each year (that's the point of culling them isn't it?).
If selection and culling is on performance too, as I believe it should, what would be the point of culling an animal in the bottom half of a high ranked flock, who may well be still in the top 10-20% of the breed? He will still be an improver in most flocks and likely has something to offer.

If you're only culling a tiny number, in order to maximise sales numbers and keep the shareholders happy, that's a different issue perhaps.

Yes and no.

If one were the only individual that was culling on performance and functionality then this would be true.

But if others are doing the same, then the bar (breed average) is constantly rising. Combine this with the fact that a lot of traits have very poor heritability, and getting the top end breeding nucleus can be slow progress while the average is increasing, as the goal posts are always moving in front of you.

 

[Tim W]

Quite happy to tell people how many haven't made it and why, problem is ,they often want to buy one of them.

If it's had it's head chopped off they can't buy it

The problem is that everyone thinks that their ram lambs are the best and are in the top 10% of the breed

 

[easyram1]

Sounds good.
Your ewes are run on grass all year round without supplementation? And I take it your rams are grown on just grass? Lowland Shropshire is a fantastic place to grow grass.
Ive spent a lot of time clipping in NZ, the texels out there seemed to have hourendous feet and foot stucture as it was a mostly terminal breed. Have you had issues with this with there being such a small population of them over there?

The selection of your breeding stock must be very high. What % of lambs would make it to sale?

All our original Texels were sourced from Robbie Hughes, a Welsh expat, who has a pretty ruthless culling policy and had a total flock spend of less than £100 on 1000 ewes when we bought our foundation stock in 2011: no wormer for 20+ years and and sheep requiring feet trimming/paring culled rather than treated.So we don't see any major feet probs in our Texels although to be fair probably Suffolks are slightly better feetwise ( black v white hooves I assume ). There is a massive difference feetwise between our NZ sheep and our old UK sheep with better foot structure including smaller feet, tighter cleats and less horn growth ( ? due to less concs ) so we do no regular trimming and virtually no emergency trimming ( probably cull instead ) About 70% of rams sold for breeding but that is declining as our flock size grows. Concs fed to indoor lambers pre lambing in early march although this year hope to use just ultrasoy + good haylage. Late lambers and last years rams are wintered currently on stubble turnips and will lamb on grass with no concs fed. Finding new genetics is always a problem due to ARR/ARR requirements for imports

 

[easyram1]

Interesting article by John Vipond in SAC Beef and Sheep News ( Feb ) I hope my scanned attachment works

 

[gatepost]

If it's had it's head chopped off they can't buy it

The problem is that everyone thinks that their ram lambs are the best and are in the top 10% of the breed

Oh so true.

 

[neilo]

If it's had it's head chopped off they can't buy it

The problem is that everyone thinks that their ram lambs are the best and are in the top 10% of the breed

My 10% reference was regarding selection on performance, so a top 10% Signet ram. He might still be below average in a highly ranked flock though.

It goes without saying (I hope) that any with structural faults would be outed regardless of performance, although a little 'corrective' foot trimming has been known to sort problems up to sale day I'm told.

 

[Woolly]

All our original Texels were sourced from Robbie Hughes, a Welsh expat, who has a pretty ruthless culling policy and had a total flock spend of less than £100 on 1000 ewes when we bought our foundation stock in 2011: no wormer for 20+ years and and sheep requiring feet trimming/paring culled rather than treated.

That is impressive.

What about anti-fly pour-on?
And do you bolus?

Thanks for filling us in - an interesting thread.

 

[Clipping1964]

All our original Texels were sourced from Robbie Hughes, a Welsh expat, who has a pretty ruthless culling policy and had a total flock spend of less than £100 on 1000 ewes when we bought our foundation stock in 2011: no wormer for 20+ years and and sheep requiring feet trimming/paring culled rather than treated.So we don't see any major feet probs in our Texels although to be fair probably Suffolks are slightly better feetwise ( black v white hooves I assume ). There is a massive difference feetwise between our NZ sheep and our old UK sheep with better foot structure including smaller feet, tighter cleats and less horn growth ( ? due to less concs ) so we do no regular trimming and virtually no emergency trimming ( probably cull instead ) About 70% of rams sold for breeding but that is declining as our flock size grows. Concs fed to indoor lambers pre lambing in early march although this year hope to use just ultrasoy + good haylage. Late lambers and last years rams are wintered currently on stubble turnips and will lamb on grass with no concs fed. Finding new genetics is always a problem due to ARR/ARR requirements for imports

Ive shorn sheep there if my memory serves me correctly. And from what I recall he could have done with spending a bit more on his vet & med.
Feet wise isnt it that we were just selecting sheep with bad feet. there would have been sheep bred in this country with sound feet but they just werent seen as important at the time? Ihave to disagree too with NZ sheep having better feet, I think I've seen more NZ bred sheep with terrible legs and feet than British, and I've been around a bit. Youngsters seem to think performance records are far more important than the structural correctness of animals.

You run an interesting enterprise. Genetics wise, it must add massive cost as opposed to searching the UK for as good if not better breeding.

With you based in one of the best grass growing areas, and wintering animals on root crops would you say that its hard for you to test animals. How do you improve on important things like animale being able to convert on marginal forage or survivability being in such a kind climate

 

[dogandstick]

All our original Texels were sourced from Robbie Hughes, a Welsh expat, who has a pretty ruthless culling policy and had a total flock spend of less than £100 on 1000 ewes when we bought our foundation stock in 2011: no wormer for 20+ years and and sheep requiring feet trimming/paring culled rather than treated.So we don't see any major feet probs in our Texels although to be fair probably Suffolks are slightly better feetwise ( black v white hooves I assume ). There is a massive difference feetwise between our NZ sheep and our old UK sheep with better foot structure including smaller feet, tighter cleats and less horn growth ( ? due to less concs ) so we do no regular trimming and virtually no emergency trimming ( probably cull instead ) About 70% of rams sold for breeding but that is declining as our flock size grows. Concs fed to indoor lambers pre lambing in early march although this year hope to use just ultrasoy + good haylage. Late lambers and last years rams are wintered currently on stubble turnips and will lamb on grass with no concs fed. Finding new genetics is always a problem due to ARR/ARR requirements for imports

Been looking at a few random Easytexels on BASCO. Are they compared with UK Texels? Might not be representative, but most of the ones I looked at had inedexes of about 50, which was way down the negative side. Am I missing something?

 

[easyram1]

Been looking at a few random Easytexels on BASCO. Are they compared with UK Texels? Might not be representative, but most of the ones I looked at had inedexes of about 50, which was way down the negative side. Am I missing something?

Yes. Our EasyTexels are all recorded with Signet and you are correct all their figs are in the -50 to +100 range. The figs are representative of our flocks figs there is absolutely NO CONNECTION or LINKAGE of any sort between our NZ Texels and UK Texels and so comparing their figures is pretty meaningless. I tried very very hard to wangle an EasyTexel into Ram Compare last year but that was not thought to be a good idea by the organisers who probably have less interest in a single ram breeder than a breed society when that individual is thought to be always looking after himself , so we carry on with no direct comparison. This is why I am so enthusiastic about the INZAC project in Athenry where there is a direct comparison for all traits between NZ and Irish Texels ( and Suffolks) and we know from the first year of 5 that the NZ Texels are comparing very favourably with the high index Irish Texels and even more so with the low ones. Scientists have compared Irish and UK Texels and there is a lot of genetics in common and the Sheep Ireland and Signet figs are also considered to be very much on a par.

 

[easyram1]

Ive shorn sheep there if my memory serves me correctly. And from what I recall he could have done with spending a bit more on his vet & med.
Feet wise isnt it that we were just selecting sheep with bad feet. there would have been sheep bred in this country with sound feet but they just werent seen as important at the time? Ihave to disagree too with NZ sheep having better feet, I think I've seen more NZ bred sheep with terrible legs and feet than British, and I've been around a bit. Youngsters seem to think performance records are far more important than the structural correctness of animals.

You run an interesting enterprise. Genetics wise, it must add massive cost as opposed to searching the UK for as good if not better breeding.

With you based in one of the best grass growing areas, and wintering animals on root crops would you say that its hard for you to test animals. How do you improve on important things like animale being able to convert on marginal forage or survivability being in such a kind climate

Regarding feet and other functional traits I can only speak from our own experience of owning UK Suffolks from 1953 to 2006 when the majority of our Crosemanor Flock was sold ( I was involved on the farm from 1977) and then we had NZ Suffolks from 2007 Sufftexes from 2009 and Texels from 2011.Our experience to date is very positive about the NZ sheep of all breeds.
Regarding our location even if we live in what you consider to be the land of milk and honey we are in a definite rain shadow area under the Welsh Hills and to the west of the Cheshire Gap. Our great fear is summer droughts and producing grass fed rams when you have no grass from June to Sept is a bit of a challenge as many clients will have noticed at Open Days etc. All we can do is our best and with a higher proportion of our rams in the hills than most other ram breeders I would be very happy about their ability to thrive on substandard forage when they leave us. I think @Joe S bossman from the very first page of this thread would support this claim. He is based on Orkney and the original rams with their ewes were away on a separate island for the whole year with only very unproductive grass. Ours thrived where others in the past did not or died so result was more orders for EasyRams from him and neighbours

 

[easyram1]

Ive shorn sheep there if my memory serves me correctly. And from what I recall he could have done with spending a bit more on his vet & med.
Feet wise isnt it that we were just selecting sheep with bad feet. there would have been sheep bred in this country with sound feet but they just werent seen as important at the time? Ihave to disagree too with NZ sheep having better feet, I think I've seen more NZ bred sheep with terrible legs and feet than British, and I've been around a bit. Youngsters seem to think performance records are far more important than the structural correctness of animals.

You run an interesting enterprise. Genetics wise, it must add massive cost as opposed to searching the UK for as good if not better breeding.

With you based in one of the best grass growing areas, and wintering animals on root crops would you say that its hard for you to test animals. How do you improve on important things like animale being able to convert on marginal forage or survivability being in such a kind climate

Regarding feet and other functional traits I can only speak from our own experience of owning UK Suffolks from 1953 to 2006 when the majority of our Crosemanor Flock was sold ( I was involved on the farm from 1977 and then we had NZ Suffolks from 2007 Sufftexes from 2009 and Texels from 2011.
In terms of where we farm nothing we can do about that and even if we live in what you consider to be the land of milk and honey by being in a rain shadow under the Welsh Hills and to the west of the Cheshire Gap our great fear is summer droughts and producing grass fed rams when you have no grass from June to Sept is a bit of a challenge. All we can do is our best and with a higher proportion of our rams in the hills than most other ram breeders I would be very happy about their ability to thrive on substandard forage when they leave us.

That is impressive.

What about anti-fly pour-on?
And do you bolus?

Thanks for filling us in - an interesting thread.

Yes we use pour ons and dip later in the year. A lot of our land is peaty/sandy and the sheep acquire a grey tinge to their wool so we find that dipping definitely freshens them up. Quite a lot of our land also has drains and ditches running through it ( we are in the middle of Shropshire's Meres and Mosses area ) and so plenty of flies
We currently use Mayo Boluses

 

[Joe S]

Regarding feet and other functional traits I can only speak from our own experience of owning UK Suffolks from 1953 to 2006 when the majority of our Crosemanor Flock was sold ( I was involved on the farm from 1977) and then we had NZ Suffolks from 2007 Sufftexes from 2009 and Texels from 2011.Our experience to date is very positive about the NZ sheep of all breeds.
Regarding our location even if we live in what you consider to be the land of milk and honey we are in a definite rain shadow area under the Welsh Hills and to the west of the Cheshire Gap. Our great fear is summer droughts and producing grass fed rams when you have no grass from June to Sept is a bit of a challenge as many clients will have noticed at Open Days etc. All we can do is our best and with a higher proportion of our rams in the hills than most other ram breeders I would be very happy about their ability to thrive on substandard forage when they leave us. I think @Joe S bossman from the very first page of this thread would support this claim. He is based on Orkney and the original rams with their ewes were away on a separate island for the whole year with only very unproductive grass. Ours thrived where others in the past did not or died so result was more orders for EasyRams from him and neighbours

Yes they did very well out there! It's not all his sheep out there but the once there did very good! Im 100% sure he would support it!
Between me and him we got my uncles to buy a few! Rob seatter? Ring any bells?

 

[easyram1]

Yes they did very well out there! It's not all his sheep out there but the once there did very good! Im 100% sure he would support it!
Between me and him we got my uncles to buy a few! Rob seatter? Ring any bells?

Yes he bought 3 I intend coming to some of the shows on Orkney in early August so I will buy you a "Thank You" drink then

 

[neilo]

That is impressive.

What about anti-fly pour-on?
And do you bolus?

Thanks for filling us in - an interesting thread.

To be fair, I think it was Robbie Hughes (in NZ) that claimed to have a vet & med bill of £100 for 1000 ewes, not @easyram1 in Shropshire.

 

[neilo]

Yes. Our EasyTexels are all recorded with Signet and you are correct all their figs are in the -50 to +100 range. The figs are representative of our flocks figs there is absolutely NO CONNECTION or LINKAGE of any sort between our NZ Texels and UK Texels and so comparing their figures is pretty meaningless. I tried very very hard to wangle an EasyTexel into Ram Compare last year but that was not thought to be a good idea by the organisers who probably have less interest in a single ram breeder than a breed society when that individual is thought to be always looking after himself , so we carry on with no direct comparison. This is why I am so enthusiastic about the INZAC project in Athenry where there is a direct comparison for all traits between NZ and Irish Texels ( and Suffolks) and we know from the first year of 5 that the NZ Texels are comparing very favourably with the high index Irish Texels and even more so with the low ones. Scientists have compared Irish and UK Texels and there is a lot of genetics in common and the Sheep Ireland and Signet figs are also considered to be very much on a par.

Not knocking what you're doing but, given your current numbers, would it not be worth using a UK Texel or two across some of your NZ Texels, in order to create linkage, and make your Signet ebv's have some sort of relevance? I understand semen is available FOC from some of the RamCompare rams, which would be well connected and with high accuracy figures, making them ideal 'reference rams'.

 

[Tim W]

Not knocking what you're doing but, given your current numbers, would it not be worth using a UK Texel or two across some of your NZ Texels, in order to create linkage, and make your Signet ebv's have some sort of relevance? I understand semen is available FOC from some of the RamCompare rams, which would be well connected and with high accuracy figures, making them ideal 'reference rams'.

This is what we do --- buy in rams from other recorded shedding types and compare. It's the only way to know with confidence where you stand

 

[Jackson4]

Ive shorn sheep there if my memory serves me correctly. And from what I recall he could have done with spending a bit more on his vet & med.
Feet wise isnt it that we were just selecting sheep with bad feet. there would have been sheep bred in this country with sound feet but they just werent seen as important at the time? Ihave to disagree too with NZ sheep having better feet, I think I've seen more NZ bred sheep with terrible legs and feet than British, and I've been around a bit. Youngsters seem to think performance records are far more important than the structural correctness of animals.

You run an interesting enterprise. Genetics wise, it must add massive cost as opposed to searching the UK for as good if not better breeding.

With you based in one of the best grass growing areas, and wintering animals on root crops would you say that its hard for you to test animals. How do you improve on important things like animale being able to convert on marginal forage or survivability being in such a kind climate

There was me thinking the after the first few words you were the usual axe to grind troll like some others with their 'laser cutting machines' no region given and only selected members can see who you are I had to laugh when you said Shropshire was a 'fantastic!' place to grow grass, in the hills near Birmingham Wow milk and honey. Thousand questions getting at a negative answer i thought the Robbie Hughes comment will pee him off and he'll be out with it.. you dont disappoint

I asked about these sheep from people that already had them, they said they did pretty much what they say they do, and recommended them. not over the top at all. JD kid from kiwi land was saying same about Robbie and he's got his rams, i asked Robin and he wouldn't make any grand claims more of a see for yourself, but then if you are buying because you have big functional problems and a lot of footrot one tup isnt going to be some sort of miracle cure so you wouldnt.

I can only go on personal experience and i did wonder if the texel was the best way of closing the flock as part of breeding a composite because my perception of texel feet aint great but at the moment i'd say between the toes they are good, i would say the nz texel is typical in that it has brittle and thin horn and this probably causes more shelly hoof... but then again my dorset x's have never had any shelly hoof since they have been here and i am now finding it so this is mixed in with the change in nutrients, grass quality/minerals/vitamins from when this had dairy grass and muck to becoming a pure sheep farm with little going on it? So who knows.
I have found a few hogs (5 in 100?) with the heel squashed and mishaped at the back which is typically texel also. Whether these problems will go away as they have had a hard upbringing or get worse i dont know, but as shearlings there is hardly any shelly hoof so we'll see. Im quite happy to let you know if they do.