Empty shearlings at scanning

[twizzel]

Just interested to see what others do with empty shearlings at scanning. Closed flock and started toxo and enzovax this year, my head says to cull any that aren't in lamb, but the cost of the vaccines is a bit offputting. I've got a few nice ewe lambs running on for next year. My shearlings this year have been hit quite hard with orf just as the tups came out, most of them have had it to varying degrees yet the mature ewes they are running with seem relatively unaffected. Scanning next week but just interested to see if people give shearlings another chance or get rid.

 

[exmoorromney]

Just interested to see what others do with empty shearlings at scanning. Closed flock and started toxo and enzovax this year, my head says to cull any that aren't in lamb, but the cost of the vaccines is a bit offputting. I've got a few nice ewe lambs running on for next year. My shearlings this year have been hit quite hard with orf just as the tups came out, most of them have had it to varying degrees yet the mature ewes they are running with seem relatively unaffected. Scanning next week but just interested to see if people give shearlings another chance or get rid.

We are lucky that we have a hill to kick empty shearlings out onto so they are kept cheap enough, they get a management tag though and will go to a terminal ram the next year, needless to say if they are empty again they go down the road. The Enzo and Toxo cost and cost of replacements is the reason we keep them.

 

[DB67]

Blackies here, gimmers will get a saw draft on the horn and back to hill. Any more nonsense and away.

 

[Guiggs]

Generally I'd cull them, with prices as they are i wouldn't hesitate to get rid, they are too expensive to run round another year doing bugger all to earn their keep!

 

[Skintagain]

I would never dream of keeping them to be honest. They are knobby enough to lamb as it is if they haven’t lambed as hoggs never mind as a two shear.

 

[Man_in_black]

 

[NZDan]

We cull all ewes that are empty or fail to raise a lamb. If there are more that planned we either feed the remaining ewes better or will use the money from selling the empty ones to buy some in lamb ewes.

 

[Tim W]

If you retain empty ewes you are surely creating a hobby flock

 

[unlacedgecko]

Just interested to see what others do with empty shearlings at scanning. Closed flock and started toxo and enzovax this year, my head says to cull any that aren't in lamb, but the cost of the vaccines is a bit offputting. I've got a few nice ewe lambs running on for next year. My shearlings this year have been hit quite hard with orf just as the tups came out, most of them have had it to varying degrees yet the mature ewes they are running with seem relatively unaffected. Scanning next week but just interested to see if people give shearlings another chance or get rid.

I've had tack customer that would run roun an empty 2th. Means you could have kept an animal till 4th for no income?! Never made sense to me.

I'd like to kill all empty ewe lambs tbh. Will have to see what the scan is though.

 

[Bob the beef]

Empties never get a second chance here. Looked after them for 18 months already. Couldn’t bear to look at them for another 12. I get where you are with the cost of vet and meds, but you will never breed fertility into your flock by carrying passengers

 

[twizzel]

Think that pretty much confirmed my thoughts then anything empty needs gone. It was just the vaccine cost sticking in my mind but with a self replacing flock there’s always someone to take their place.

 

[yellowbelly]

I reckon I spotted a gimmer jump off the scanner crate with an empty mark last week. She didn't appear to be marked by the sweeper tups either

If she scans empty when we scan the late mob she'll be joining the queue to get on @Man_in_black 's kebab thigummynob.

That'll be her 'two strikes and yer out'

 

[CopperBeech]

Kill zem all!

 

[AftonShepherd]

I used to get anywhere between 8 and 15 empty gimmers every year, and ran them on (ear notched). Could guarantee 4 to 6 of them would scan empty again the following year. All go cull first time now.

 

[neilo]

Hmmm. Whilst I would ordinarily kick anything empty off to the kebab shop, I do make a few exceptions sometimes. Pedigree terminal sire sheep that have exceptional conformation & index would likely get another chance, albeit with a black mark recorded. They have cost a lot to get to that point, so the best might get a pass.

Similarly crossbred ewes, if there has been a severe management c*ck up that has resulted in a load of problems, I would be lenient on some of the best shearlings, if it wasn’t really their fault, but down to the incompetence of the shepherd.
Anything older than a shearling doesn’t have any excuse though, and the vast majority of empty shearlings would go too.

When the Hogg price was good a couple of years ago I did out all the barren ewe lambs in the Spring. It felt good having everything on the farm producing something, but it also made me short on numbers the following year. In hindsight, I should have kept them back, or most of them at least.

 

[Global ovine]

I'd like to kill all empty ewe lambs tbh. Will have to see what the scan is though.

A policy a lot of ram breeders are now doing in NZ with very positive results. To have dependable results reflecting genetics, the relevant abortion diseases must be vaccinated against. Also the sires of the breeding ewe flock must come from either that flock or a like flock under the same selection pressure for onset of early fertility.
Such selection pressure will advance pregnancy rates by 2 to 5% per generation depending upon the flock's selection starting point for this trait. NZ Romney flocks have reported advanced ewe lamb pregnancy rates from about 80% to 95% in 15 years by selecting sires from female lines achieving 1st cycle pregnancy as ewe lambs and culling empties.

The use of mating harnesses on teaser rams will also identify cycling ewe lambs for priority selection, but it doesn't identify those that become pregnant, another issue in young maiden ewes. There is plenty of trial evidence showing lifetime performance favours early ewe fertility.

With shearlings being more advanced on the maturity curve than ewe lambs, I would expect the lifetime difference between those that became pregnant vs those which remained empty to be more extreme. Therefore the cost of retaining them gets greater if the difference is purely genetic.

If abortion disease is present on a farm it doesn't take many saved lambs to pay for the vaccine.

 

[CopperBeech]

Like most things in stock management its all about figuring out why.

If you've got 200 ewe lambs and 150 get in lamb, why didn't the others? If you've got 200 ewe lambs and 190 of them are clean arsed, why arent the other ten? If you've got 200 ewe lambs and 100 scan empty, or 100 are dirty arsed etc, maybe its not the sheep.

If they have no reason not to perform, then they go, if they cannot perform because of physical limitation where others on equal footing have 'got there', then they go.

Its like selling your fastest growing lambs and always running the smallest tail enders to shearlings as they dont make fat size in time. They could all be triplets . . . . . or twins out of ewe lambs, but they could also as easily be out of ewes with poor milk, could be poor growers, suffer more with parasites, bad forage converters or out of ewes that only conceive at end of last cycle etc.

Keep the best, eat the rest.

Having said this, I think we all, when building numbers give a lot more leeway than we do when we are at capacity.

 

[Henery]

A good policy is that they must lamb, not necessary to rear a lamb, that’s a bonus... otherwise your encouraging lower fertility in the flock... simples....

 

[andybk]

Its still not to late , cant you put a ram out now with a harness and sell as couples later on for one cycle ? , will be worth a bit more than cull , the orf could have given them a temp (or the ram) its rare to get more than odd few that are barreners at that age . might not always be genetics

 

[twizzel]

Its still not to late , cant you put a ram out now with a harness and sell as couples later on for one cycle ? , will be worth a bit more than cull , the orf could have given them a temp (or the ram) its rare to get more than odd few that are barreners at that age . might not always be genetics

To be honest I don’t want to be lambing in May due to other work. Hoping the orf hasn’t affected them too much- the ram wasn’t affected and used a sweeper too, and it only really got bad in the weeks after the ram came out. Scanning on Wednesday so will see what the score is then.