Ewe mature weight

[TALDLONKTUP2]

And therein lies the 'divide' between those who believe recording works and those who don't. What you say is correct in that a large flock could do 'within flock' selection for a specific environment but how many terminal flocks are really that big to be able to make strong enough genetic gain based on maybe <100 ewes. If you add all of those smaller flocks up into a population of say 9000 ewes, you end up with a very strong dataset. Let's remember that all of those flocks have sheep that are recently or distantly related to sheep in other flocks.... it is through these relationships that we know how we can differentiate between environmental/management factors on performance and what is down to genetics. It certainly isn't voodoo.

As for relying on trust for the data.... you are correct. But who is really stupid enough to try to get away with skewing it? If you cheat for a year and then sell a high figured ram to another flock (bare in mind his accuracy figures would be poor as there would be no recorded progeny).... it won't perform! simple. You then get found out. If you have very little data on him (e.g. his parents are French imports) his figures will be corrected toward an average for the breed so he wouldn't look great. You can try to cheat but you end up wasting your own money only to get found out in the end and make no genetic progress in your own flock to boot.

It shouldn't be a matter or believe or not. Either the improvement is there to be seen or it isn't

 

[andybk]

As for relying on trust for the data.... you are correct. But who is really stupid enough to try to get away with skewing it? If you cheat for a year and then sell a high figured ram to another flock (bare in mind his accuracy figures would be poor as there would be no recorded progeny).... it won't perform! simple. You then get found out. If you have very little data on him (e.g. his parents are French imports) his figures will be corrected toward an average for the breed so he wouldn't look great. You can try to cheat but you end up wasting your own money only to get found out in the end and make no genetic progress in your own flock to boot.

even though the French imports are the end result of a similar but far more reliable recording scheme with data going back 40 + years , with AMBO (terminal traits ) and AMCR (female traits ) both high will give elite status . yet if i joined signet , every year i imported rams my index gets reset to average .
Interestingly nearly all the higher AMCR recorded rams i looked at this year from their testing station were bigger framed than the Ambo rated ones , presumably they would be bigger mature size ,
on a side note i had our shearling ewes (50) in today to put the ram in ,no feed since 6 weeks old scales were there from yesterday , and they averaged 78kg bit more than i thought .

 

[bobajob]

Whilst I get it - keeping sheep is all about profit and not vanity and big show ponies are no good to anyone-

But I have seen ewes and some breeds are worse than others where they have a low ewe mature weight and the lambs never seem to grow out the same- the lambs can sometimes seem a bit stunted with not enough stretch to their frame ( its hard to describe). But how these farmers get these smaller lambs to a decent finished weight I don't know.!. As gatepost said earlier they will tell you they are more efficient because they can keep a few more ewes because they are smaller.

They dont stand in the ring with their little store lambs at the mart anyway, always busy that day

 

[Global ovine]

Does this mean increasing the number of dams/ha, or increasing the lambing%?

Increasing capital stock numbers over the same area. That's more ewes and their replacements.

But the point you're over looking, is that dispute seemingly decades of recording and selection on that basis, the "science" is failing to produce ewes that are performing any better (if as well) as the UK "Bonney heid" selected ewes....

Where stocking rate has increased, the animals with superior genetics have been able to maintain productivity levels, this is an increase in efficiency. This has certainly been the NZ experience where lamb output has almost doubled per ewe mainly due to increased lambing/weaning % (even though individual lamb weights at weaning have been rather constant) and improved lamb rearing skills, particularly post weaning, as greater dependency now goes into pasture management.

AHDB reports have not shown a similar trend in the UK. Also a greater proportion of the UK flock is on unimproved upland pasture, much with environmental constraints thereby keeping productivity on a flatter plane. As for "Boney heids", these may not affect output, but certainly add to the input costs.

There are many reasons why this ratio appears constant across numerous sheep growing countries, all with their own peculiar reasons. However sheep that dramatically fall outside this trend are extremely valuable animals, but will never be identified without a recording programme that accurately measures the difference. This would require an upper level analysis of existing data on the data bases of programmes such as Signet and SIL etc. Money well spent providing the commercial farmers within that country recognise this advantage and are willing to support breeders pursuing that direction.

 

[BELOWAVERAGE]

We have a few different types were running commercially, the mules (BFL x Glamorgan) we like ideally 70kg. These are put to texel Rams with us and do very well without pulling the ewe down when milking as she's got body reserves if it goes dry etc.. some females from these are kept as our texelX ewes, they are ideally 80kg to rear lambs well etc and not have to many problems, we put these to charolais Rams and the lambs grow like stink with most gone by weaning.

We lamb everything as ewe lambs to stunt mature weight as I've seen some TexX ewes that didn't lamb as ewe lambs hitting the 100kg mark. At this weight they are eating to much the rest of the year just to rear a set of twins at the end of the day.

The welsh mountains we have are 50kg, anymore and they go overfat, the Glamorgans are 60-65kg and are far superior ewes in every way on a lowland farm compared to the Welsh, but being heavier you have to run slightly less but their lambing percentage is higher than the Welsh so they produce more meat/acre than the Welsh will.

It all depends what breed of ewe you want, what breed of sire your using and what the end purpose/market is. "Almost" every breed has a position on a farm somewhere out there.

Just googled ewe weights and this popped up, you have or did have some fair ewe's then.

 

[Al R]

Just googled ewe weights and this popped up, you have or did have some fair ewe's then.

Still got hundreds around the 100kg mark, even mules but they’d possible have a touch of Cheviot in the mother (Cheviot x welsh brokers I bought in 2017 then crossed with BFL) some of those ewes sit at 100kg all year, they rear twins and triplets fast off grass true but thousand of them would be a big ask to feed. They scan no better than the 70-75kg ewes and would probably get lambs out a touch earlier but it’s hard to say when lambs arn’t EID’d at birth.

Also running almost double the amount of ewes compared to then, texelX ewes have been dropped and havnt kept those ewe lambs for 3 years, predominately ease of lambing but also 90kg ewes are wasteful when a 75kg ewe does the job just the same. Exlana and Mules and Welsh mainly, flock average over 1500 mature ewes would be around 70-75kg I’d say, ewe lambs less then obviously so not included in the average weight figure

 

[SteveHants]

Interesting point. I would argue that selection is producing better performing ewes. The difficulty is that you are competing against the natural heterosis (hybrid vigour) of the mule. You need to build in the hidden costs of buying in disease and the fact that 10-20% of the mules you buy will be poor performers. Do farmers really measure the performance of those mules well enough to actually know how well/badly they perform? If the best mules perform as well as a maternal purebred, how many slip through the net and aren't included in the comparison (of course this works both ways).

Is it better to breed eg lleyns that you can select the best and cull the worst in a closed flock but not have a good level of heterosis or is it better to have the benefit of heterosis by buying mules but risk buying in MV, Johne's, Border, OPA, CLA and footrot? I guess this is where the stabilised composites come in.

To me this is where we are missing a trick, recorded breeding of halfbreds to exploit heterosis.

I think with there being so many local climactic and nutritional variations, breeding pure ewe flocks to suit individual farms is the better way forward. The missing element as far as I'm concerned would be breeding performance recorded terminal halfbreds to get that three way cross.