Easycare sheep system opinions

[FarmerK]

Currently run texel cross ewes but considering buying a handful of easycares.

Preferably some information off someone who has then or had them so no negativity off those who’ve never had them.

What are your thoughts?
Are they as good as people say? Obviously easycare still means they require work to them but the decreased labour can only mean one thing.

Are people keeping them pure or crossing them?

Any information would be great. Thanks

 

[Bald Rick]

If you're really keen, I can give you the number of the man who developed them as a breed in their own right, Iolo Owen.

He's one if my landlords and as straight as they come

 

[JP1]

Have a study of Exlana and those on here with them too

@Tim W

 

[britt]

To get the most out of them you need to simplify your whole system. Less concentrates, more grazed forage.
Concentrates = more cost, bigger lambs so more lambing problems and higher ewe and lamb mortality at lambing.
Running a few alongside another breed you won't really see the benefit unless you manage them differently.

 

[FarmerK]

To get the most out of them you need to simplify your whole system. Less concentrates, more grazed forage.
Concentrates = more cost, bigger lambs so more lambing problems and higher ewe and lamb mortality at lambing.
Running a few alongside another breed you won't really see the benefit unless you manage them differently.

That’s my thinking behind it. I was just hoping to have a few separate to the current flock and if it worked in my favour just increase the easycares and decrease the current flock

 

[Bones]

You could always breed up

 

[Bones]

If I had it to do again I would have breed them out of my own flock, I had 15 years of selective breeding in my original flock and there was a right bit of cheviot in them , so would have shed the quicker ,

 

[britt]

You could always breed up

You just end up with complicated shearing.
Buy some ewes and put them all to an easycare tup and multiply.
When I changed I sold all of my cross bred ewes and bought as many as I could afford and multiplied them.

 

[pgk]

You just end up with complicated shearing.
Buy some ewes and put them all to an easycare tup and multiply.
When I changed I sold all of my cross bred ewes and bought as many as I could afford and multiplied them.

Depends on dam line, we bought 30 and a ram off iolo to start and put a number of lleyns with clean bellies to the ram, over half of offspring we kept fully shed, a quarter left with rug on back remainder mainly shed neck and around tail. Have done an exercise over last 3 lambings putting texel ram on shedding ewes, all offspring have shed in 1st two years worth of lambs. We have gone away from feeding nuts and energy buckets to ewes over winter, this year absent forage crops we had to resort to poorish hay and urea molasses liquid feed in last 6 weeks to avoid twin lamb. Shedders keep condition well on some poor pp, can get fit too easily on turnips. We have moved to exlana rams bought on ebv's which have improved average across flock. Moving away from smaller ewes 50 to 55kg to somewhere near 65kg as we are getting more 20kg deadweights in multiples. Would not go back to woolly sheep across the board, we only have Texels and Chartex for interest and cos boy likes to have some E grade lambs to look at?

 

[pgk]

Currently run texel cross ewes but considering buying a handful of easycares.

Preferably some information off someone who has then or had them so no negativity off those who’ve never had them.

What are your thoughts?
Are they as good as people say? Obviously easycare still means they require work to them but the decreased labour can only mean one thing.

Are people keeping them pure or crossing them?

Any information would be great. Thanks

Missed the last question re crossing.
Sold a good few ewe lambs and tups to a friend who has bred pure but started crossing poorer/smaller examples to charollais tups, superb lambs.
Another friend has used charmoise and sufftex to good effect.
Our texel crosses are top notch (in my opinion)
Next time going to put some to Chartex to compare with texel.
We now put anything which has not performed as we like into our B flock to be crossed.

 

[ISCO]

We bought 20 gimmer lambs last autumn to try. So far I like the sheep, they held their condition well and don't seem to make a mess shedding. Lambed to beltex and had to assist some.
Tim w on here is Exlana man and he advised us at Northsheep to try any shedders to see if we liked the sheep. We intend to buy some Exlanas this year as more recorded.

 

[Tim W]

Currently run texel cross ewes but considering buying a handful of easycares.

Preferably some information off someone who has then or had them so no negativity off those who’ve never had them.

What are your thoughts?
Are they as good as people say? Obviously easycare still means they require work to them but the decreased labour can only mean one thing.

Are people keeping them pure or crossing them?

Any information would be great. Thanks

By easycare i presume you mean wool shedding---
There are many types of woolly sheep and the same is true of wool shedding sheep so you need to pick an animal that will suit your circumstances /system
You can get shedding sheep bred up from hill ewes /shetlands/cheviots/Lleyns/Suffolks/etc and therefore find ewes that will weigh from 45kg to 85kg mature weight that will scan from 110% to 200%

If you're anywhere near me you're welcome to come take a look any time, we have 600 Exlanas running on a mix of grass types
I run them with minimal interference, no mothering up or messing around with them at lambing, grass only, no wormers for adults etc etc ---just finished tagging the lambs and we have 167% at foot (plus an extra 12% that got lifted from triplets and given away at 48hrs old)

 

[FarmerK]

By easycare i presume you mean wool shedding---
There are many types of woolly sheep and the same is true of wool shedding sheep so you need to pick an animal that will suit your circumstances /system
You can get shedding sheep bred up from hill ewes /shetlands/cheviots/Lleyns/Suffolks/etc and therefore find ewes that will weigh from 45kg to 85kg mature weight that will scan from 110% to 200%

If you're anywhere near me you're welcome to come take a look any time, we have 600 Exlanas running on a mix of grass types
I run them with minimal interference, no mothering up or messing around with them at lambing, grass only, no wormers for adults etc etc ---just finished tagging the lambs and we have 167% at foot (plus an extra 12% that got lifted from triplets and given away at 48hrs old)

Where abouts are you?

 

[Chasingmytail]

think the quality is mixed. Some people stick some texel in there - An easycare of Nelson x wilts is what we got the original came as in lamb from North Wales. Ive also bought some others and these have grown too small and need to go.

They are def easy to keep in general their feet are good, hardy, little fly strike and no sheering so there plenty of good points. The negative being they are quite wild due to the Welsh side. Smaller lambs so we have struggled to get the weights in some. Usual weights around 39 - 45kg but we struggled last year some lights. The shape is not great seems to be some buyers at mart would just dont buy them. The size of the ewes suits me as Im short. However they still strong. Def low input but ours did suffer from mineral deficiency from our land so bolus and buckets.

We lambed inside this year because it suits us and adopting and less chasing around the field. All ours are grass fed. Electric fence trained.

Highs and lows for the breed but seeing we work a lot off the farm they suit the low input system. Just buy the best foundations.

 

[Tim W]

Where abouts are you?

In the south west near Salisbury
Plenty of folk with shedders all over the country who would be happy to show you round though i'm sure
Message me and i will try to suggest someone to visit/call

 

[Woolless]

We run about 300 Easycares with many carrying a percentage of shedding Texel blood, 90% lambed outside in April scanning at 173% this time. Fully recorded with Signet and selected on functional traits. Spend their winter on a sacrifice field with a nice view of the North Sea. The twins/triplets get a bit cake in the run up to lambing before they go on to their lambing fields but between that and having ewe hoggs inside for a couple of months when the grass has gone, we used 3.5 tonnes of cake this winter. Use Hampshire Down tups on the 'B' flock and as sweepers for the recorded ewes.

Commercially run and culling sensibly will result in an easily-managed flock that will thrive on grass with minimal extra feeding. They cross well with a conventional Texel too.

 

[FarmerK]

In the south west near Salisbury
Plenty of folk with shedders all over the country who would be happy to show you round though i'm sure
Message me and i will try to suggest someone to visit/call

I’m in County Durham if you know anyone around here that would be good. Salisbury is a little far for me. Thanks

 

[Tim W]

I’m in County Durham if you know anyone around here that would be good. Salisbury is a little far for me. Thanks

Yep, may be a bit of an extended day trip to me --- @Woolless is a lot closer to you

 

[Pan mixer]

They are a different mindset to conventional sheep.

We get ours in for scanning in February, split them into singles and twins, vaccinate and worm.

Then get them in again in August to wean, take the rams out and split into winter batches.

Lambing outside, a bit of a game some days right now but we go round once a day to tag and ring the boys.

No cake until after the lambs are weaned and then for the lambs only.

Rough grass, brambles and mess is what they seem to like.

Sell on the hook or in the shop.

Low input - low output, suit you if you have a lot of cheap rough grass.

 

[Danllan]

@Joe984 We run ours in two flocks, A & B, the A flock being as near as damn it what we want, so providing replacements and ewes / rams we're happy to sell as breeding stock. The B flock makes up numbers for sale of stores and provide an occasional good'un too.

When we started the price of ewes was crazy so, to my later regret, I kept nearly all ewe lambs to build up the flock. I wish now that I'd either bitten the bullet and bought more good specimens in or built the flock more slowly. That written, we're in a good situation now having culled very hard for a few years.

I think, and I know some agree with this and some are dead against it, that there should be a binning of the Easycare and Exlana names, the whole 'type' being called something like 'New Shedders'. The reason for this is because the best of either are bl**dy good and more or less interchangeable in what they're good for.

At the end of the day, we just want the least hassle with the flock and lambs that will get to store weight pretty quickly and with little input, and that is what we have now. Of course there is room for improvement and we cull hardest at the moment on tail length and fecundity, other things being where we want them.