ebv debate

intresting talked to a breeder the other night and she likes the coopworths (they are not a coopworth stud) but is a bit pee'd at what they are doing with the breed sounds like the rule books are not being followed

longevity ummm studs have to be run under harder standard mangerment most studs get looked after just a wee bit better than standard flock sheep had ewes at our last place that could last out for many years full mouth here we had the same ewes with teeth probs by year 3 and culled by year 5 so what lasts in one area may not last in others and would be a worthless trat to have in recording
Did she say which rules?
 
I agree that a compulsory number on it is daft, but 40% of my pedigrees would be down the road by their fourth lambing, not because of ebvs, but continual flock improvement (I hope) generally. When I try a ram and he disappoints, his daughters won't generally get near their fourth lambing. Did I tell you about those unrecorded rams I've bought over the years.......:whistle: (Getting back on topic).

However, four out of the five ewes I've just flushed were past their fourth lambing, and I certainly wouldn't take any breed society politicians advice as to when they should be culled.

That's the point though isn't it. Culling is a good thing, until, you do it for the sake of it and without an intelligent plan, or have a quota.

I just worked out I've culled 70% of my ewes of any age group before their 4 tooth mating, so 40% is quite a low culling rate in reality. @Ysgythan should a culling plan not also include a quota of some sort?
 
No. You cull what needs to be culled. If 70% is right or 20% is right why proscribe 40%? Farming by accountancy.
Yes I agree in part, I believe the rule was put in place to prevent people keeping every ewe lamb when they were expanding flocks. And surely a well planned breeding program should have some degree of accountancy in it?
 

Ysgythan

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Ammanford
Less sense to proscribe when you're increasing as the individual flock masters need to test lots of females in their context. I'm not against accountancy per se, but that just smacks of over thinking to me.
 

JD-Kid

Member
Did she say which rules?
it think it maybe along the lines of what you wrote
The "type' is factored in by allowing (what I think is a generous) 15%(just dropped from 10% recently). Bearing in mind that in a 500 ewe flock weaning 135%,(most would be weaning over 150%) then 15% of the rams is 50. A 500 ewe flock is probably using 3 or 4 new rams per year. Selecting 3 or 4 rams from 50 should be pretty damn easy.
They are also allowed to bring in out side genetics as long as they back cross to Coopworth sires twice, many breeders have at some stage added a little Texel, Finn, East Freisian or Romney to there flocks, while maintaining the core Coopworth type. I beleive 40% of Coopworths carry Myomax/T+.
guts of what i was picking up was the off types in there etc etc almost like saying the breed has probs and needs outside geans to make it worth while
like me and you talked about the corries if there is an outside gean in there just sell them as a 1/2 or 3/4 breed and be open about it instead of hideing it or useing it as a marketing lever
 

andybk

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Mendips Somerset
surely part of the strength of a flock is the longevity , much as JD has hinted at above , i would say a very important trait , things like teeth , feet , good udders ,
we probably replace 30% some years 10% depends on how good the new rams perform , which you dont know for 2 years at least . I would give more credence to ram lambs born from older ewes
 
it think it maybe along the lines of what you wrote
The "type' is factored in by allowing (what I think is a generous) 15%(just dropped from 10% recently). Bearing in mind that in a 500 ewe flock weaning 135%,(most would be weaning over 150%) then 15% of the rams is 50. A 500 ewe flock is probably using 3 or 4 new rams per year. Selecting 3 or 4 rams from 50 should be pretty damn easy.
They are also allowed to bring in out side genetics as long as they back cross to Coopworth sires twice, many breeders have at some stage added a little Texel, Finn, East Freisian or Romney to there flocks, while maintaining the core Coopworth type. I beleive 40% of Coopworths carry Myomax/T+.
guts of what i was picking up was the off types in there etc etc almost like saying the breed has probs and needs outside geans to make it worth while
like me and you talked about the corries if there is an outside gean in there just sell them as a 1/2 or 3/4 breed and be open about it instead of hideing it or useing it as a marketing lever
Yes I've heard others say that they are getting to variable, they've always had an open flock book and allowed other breeds in providing they were back crossed to 7/8Cpth 1/8other for ewes and 15/16Cpth 1/16Other for rams. It was decided about 10 years ago to drop one cross out so they're now 3/4Cpwth for ewes and 7/8Cpth for rams.
In reality there hasn't been much crossing at all, and in most studs none at all. Having said that with the wide use of reference sires in the Coopworth and a lot of emphasis on EBVs then an elite ram who does contain other breeds in his back ground can have wide spread effect. One ram from a number of years back in particular springs to mind, he was easily the best Coopworth ram on type and index but contained Texel blood, he was used widely by AI and is probably the main reason the Coopworth contains Myomax/T+ through him and his sons. The Coopworth breeders I know that do cross sell the cross (1/2 or 1/4) as crosses but often the very best of the 3/4 Coopworth ewes are used as replacements. Not a bad thing IMHO as it is with in breed society rules and means the breed can move forward.
 
surely part of the strength of a flock is the longevity , much as JD has hinted at above , i would say a very important trait , things like teeth , feet , good udders ,
we probably replace 30% some years 10% depends on how good the new rams perform , which you dont know for 2 years at least . I would give more credence to ram lambs born from older ewes
Getting balance right between longevity and generation interval is critical, for the last number of years we've been recording 'exit codes' on all our sheep, basically why have they left the flock. Hopefully we'll get a longevity EBV very soon calculated from this data. The US with cattle use two different EBVs one is longevity the other is stayabilty. Longevty measures the length of time a bulls daughters stay in the herd, Stayabily measures the % of a bulls daughters calve at 6 years of age. Ironically both traits are very strongly linked to heifer fertility.
 
Getting balance right between longevity and generation interval is critical, for the last number of years we've been recording 'exit codes' on all our sheep, basically why have they left the flock. Hopefully we'll get a longevity EBV very soon calculated from this data. The US with cattle use two different EBVs one is longevity the other is stayabilty. Longevty measures the length of time a bulls daughters stay in the herd, Stayabily measures the % of a bulls daughters calve at 6 years of age. Ironically both traits are very strongly linked to heifer fertility.


This balance had always bothered me until I went through my SIL Dam Summaries (annually updated eBV and Index performance ranked from the best to the worst) looking at the proportion of "Grand Matriarchs" (those that recorded 7 and more lambings). I drew a line through the Dam Summary list annually at a point where my replacements were a better bet than those ewes that had performed worse. Therefore I was concerned that I may have had too few remaining to get any sort of a handle on longevity. Here the Eureka moment commenced. The majority of highly influential sires came from such "Grand Matriarchs". It was surprising to see the number of later proven top daughters and sons out of then two tooth dams, these dams then went on to a great age and maintained huge production. I then dismissed any concern about ewes being burnt out because they had high production. If their constitution was doubtful at a younger age they were culled. The influence of ewes with a short breeding life and average or worse production is negligible within a flock.
 
This balance had always bothered me until I went through my SIL Dam Summaries (annually updated eBV and Index performance ranked from the best to the worst) looking at the proportion of "Grand Matriarchs" (those that recorded 7 and more lambings). I drew a line through the Dam Summary list annually at a point where my replacements were a better bet than those ewes that had performed worse. Therefore I was concerned that I may have had too few remaining to get any sort of a handle on longevity. Here the Eureka moment commenced. The majority of highly influential sires came from such "Grand Matriarchs". It was surprising to see the number of later proven top daughters and sons out of then two tooth dams, these dams then went on to a great age and maintained huge production. I then dismissed any concern about ewes being burnt out because they had high production. If their constitution was doubtful at a younger age they were culled. The influence of ewes with a short breeding life and average or worse production is negligible within a flock.
Yes finding the same here, the handful of my very oldest ewes were all very good ewes as young ewes, I've had no problem with so called 'burn out' even in Finns, it seems the more lambs the have as young ewes the more likely they are to have good constitution and to last. All of my oldest ewes produced a stud ram as a young ewe (either hogget, 2th or 4th lambing) and certainly plenty of daughters.
 

JD-Kid

Member
haveing a rough work out with it getting dry
started weaning early most of the time we wean at about 120-130 days from the start of lambing date this year weaning at 100 days from start of lambing date
just for simple maths we went start of lambing date to weaning date avg weight devided by days saying birth weight was 0 (ok it's not the right way but if we do each year the same it's a good bench mark )
this year even tho it's dryer we are doing 30 grams a day better than last year and if we keep going back that number is higher IE each year we have been riseing in grams a day till weaning
also this year highest tailing % so also a lift there
IF it was a standard year and we weaned at the same time as we would just a rough work out it's about 23 000 dollars more ..
dose pay to buy good rams with proven backgrounds
 

Ysgythan

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Ammanford
This balance had always bothered me until I went through my SIL Dam Summaries (annually updated eBV and Index performance ranked from the best to the worst) looking at the proportion of "Grand Matriarchs" (those that recorded 7 and more lambings). I drew a line through the Dam Summary list annually at a point where my replacements were a better bet than those ewes that had performed worse. Therefore I was concerned that I may have had too few remaining to get any sort of a handle on longevity. Here the Eureka moment commenced. The majority of highly influential sires came from such "Grand Matriarchs". It was surprising to see the number of later proven top daughters and sons out of then two tooth dams, these dams then went on to a great age and maintained huge production. I then dismissed any concern about ewes being burnt out because they had high production. If their constitution was doubtful at a younger age they were culled. The influence of ewes with a short breeding life and average or worse production is negligible within a flock.

I've never done that exercise but it chimes with our experience. When we are looking for ET donor ewes we look for ewes that have performed the best in their first few lambings because ewes that do the job tend to keep doing the job.

A prominent Scottish breeder told me he'd looked at the flock book and all the most influential rams were by ram lambs out of first time dams. It's worth keeping the breeding stock young therefore, but I think it's a waste not to get as many females out of the star performers over the following years as you can.

I suppose another issue I have with the 40% thing is that good flocks will be culling ewes between 30-40% for the sake of it that are better for the breed than the top 10% sheep of a poor flock.
 
If a flock is making annual improvements in the main traits of economic importance, at least 25- 30% of ewes will be replaced to make way for better bets. But this depends entirely upon having reliable information derived from the data the farmer collects.
 

Ysgythan

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Ammanford
I understand that. I just see it odd to put a quota on it and as high as 40%. Some years gimmers would all be culled by 4 year olds, in others well over 60% would be retained. I want to make that decision on an individual assessment not because Nanny Breed Society tells me I need to cull more.
 

JD-Kid

Member
it's a hard call fastest gains hogget rams of hogget ewes as long as you know the trates or can ID them you can speed up cycles BUT you can also have a train wreck the whole lot may crash by year 4
when i was tied up with footrot breeding program once family lines showed up trates those lines could be breed up once tests come out you could breed up faster
like micron it's a knowen thing simple to test for and can be done early in animals life
there were about 2-3 years worth of ewes and during a marage split the ewes were split one side got all the better ranked ones other got all the lower ones
the lower ones were all culled with in 2 more years, the better ones got moved around a bit and i think they may have all be sold out as no one took that stud on the work was shuned a bit like any of the old school breeding schools any one who bucks the system get's looked down on
we used to buy cull ewes from a large place also had a stud on it used to get quite a few stud ewes in the culls would of been minor things any thing major was sent to killing plants so wool probs , black spot , singles etc etc they may have also been ewes put out of the stud for a few years kept as a back up in case of a train wreck once line showed it was better then sold on
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

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