Exlana vs lleyn

[GTB]

Is there much differences between exlanas and easy care ewes, which would be rated the better sheep.

From what I've seen of @Tim W 's sheep at sheep events I'd say there was very little difference between the two breeds. Most Easycare breeders have bred up from what they had before perhaps, hence a greater variation. Exlana I'm guessing are more uniform and are selected more on EBV's though tbf some Easycare breeders are also selecting on figures too. I wouldn't be at all surprised if both breeds morph into one eventually because I know for a fact that a lot of Easycare breeders have tried an Exlana ram or two just to get some fresh bloodlines. Pretty sure it happens the other way too.

 

[GTB]

View attachment 505028 This made me laugh

Never misses a chance to fly the flag fair play to him. And it was going well until the last paragraph too

 

[Bones]

View attachment 505028 This made me laugh

Why

 

[exmoor dave]

Never misses a chance to fly the flag fair play to him. And it was going well until the last paragraph too

I weigh my lambs every two weeks once weaned!

By that paragraph they'd be shrinking

 

[Downton_shep]

Why

If they were that easy everyone would have them lol

 

[Bones]

If they were that easy everyone would have them lol[/QU

cample tweed, quotes something similar with his lambing interventions, also,3000 thousand ewes,, you think its porky pies,,

 

[Downton_shep]

cample tweed, quotes something similar with his lambing interventions, also,3000 thousand ewes,, you think its porky pies,,

There may well be some flocks doing it but certainly not all of them.

 

[GTB]

If you only caught those ewes that were going to die due to failing to lamb then those figures may be true. However most of us would rather catch an ewe (if necessary) and get a live lamb (if possible) rather than have a totally hands off approach. Also some ewes will have lambed by themselves but have no surviving lambs, again most of us would prefer to catch those (where practical) so that a spare lamb could be fostered on.

Or to put it another way, if you had 3000 ewes lambing and you went away on holiday and left them to it, most probably you'd have about ten ewes out of 3000 that would have died when you returned from failing to lamb. Does that make sense?

 

[CopperBeech]

We run a few ewes.

Got about 2400 mules, mainly north country and scotch.

Got a few lleyn x Tex, some Romney, some welsh x aberfield.

A load of NZ Suffolk x mule, some NZ Suffolk x lleyn.

A pedigree charmoise flock.

Hundred or so Shetlands.

Have about 200 exlana, and a pile of easy care.

What I'll say is that the best of them are just about all the same, but they do different jobs often, different ground, different markets etc.

As a ewe producing fat lambs, they all do a job and do it well if you are good at your bit and manage them and the ground well enough.

But if I had to have only one maternal breed, id go 100% exlana.

 

[GTB]

We run a few ewes.

Got about 2400 mules, mainly north country and scotch.

Got a few lleyn x Tex, some Romney, some welsh x aberfield.

A load of NZ Suffolk x mule, some NZ Suffolk x lleyn.

A pedigree charmoise flock.

Hundred or so Shetlands.

Have about 200 exlana, and a pile of easy care.

What I'll say is that the best of them are just about all the same, but they do different jobs often, different ground, different markets etc.

As a ewe producing fat lambs, they all do a job and do it well if you are good at your bit and manage them and the ground well enough.

But if I had to have only one maternal breed, id go 100% exlana.

You must thank your lucky stars that you moved from Wales! There's no way you could have built up a spread like that here in such a short time. I know you're running a lot of them for others but even still, well done mate.

 

[Tim W]

Is there much differences between exlanas and easy care ewes, which would be rated the better sheep.

The difference is science....
Large recorded population
Harsh selection based on data
Enforced disease screening policy

And the difference is not necessarily obvious at a glance,if you compare animals in a pen you cannot see if a ewe is worm resistant,you cannot see that she will be prolific etc
For maternal breeding recording is paramount.

As I have posted before we occasionally buy in animals (to see where we are compared to the national population of shedders) & when I get home I will re post the results...but animals selected on data unsurprisingly perform better

 

[Woolless]

From what I've seen of @Tim W 's sheep at sheep events I'd say there was very little difference between the two breeds. Most Easycare breeders have bred up from what they had before perhaps, hence a greater variation. Exlana I'm guessing are more uniform and are selected more on EBV's though tbf some Easycare breeders are also selecting on figures too. I wouldn't be at all surprised if both breeds morph into one eventually because I know for a fact that a lot of Easycare breeders have tried an Exlana ram or two just to get some fresh bloodlines. Pretty sure it happens the other way too.

As @GTB correctly says, there are Easycare breeders recording their flocks (myself included) but not enough IMO. I wouldn't be afraid to use an Exlana tup ( have in a small way this year) but also use unrecorded genetics, as it's difficult to do otherwise and keep things fresh.

 

[Tim W]

As I have posted before we occasionally buy in animals (to see where we are compared to the national population of shedders) & when I get home I will re post the results...but animals selected on data unsurprisingly perform better

Below is a quote from the previous thread ''Easycare or Exlana'' https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/easycare-or-exlana.162932/

We do occasionally buy in other wool shedding tups for comparison (it is important to know how rapidly you are improving and how far ahead/behind the rest of the market you are)
The animals we buy in from unrecorded flocks are consistently behind our animals in all production traits---the most reliable and easy to measure trait is possibly 8 week weights , the lambs from bought in rams are on average about 5% lighter than those sired by Exlana rams
In maternal traits those rams bought in from unrecorded flocks in recent (ish) years all come within the bottom 12% of the BLUP analysis

 

[bobajob]

We run a few ewes.

Got about 2400 mules, mainly north country and scotch.

Got a few lleyn x Tex, some Romney, some welsh x aberfield.

A load of NZ Suffolk x mule, some NZ Suffolk x lleyn.

A pedigree charmoise flock.

Hundred or so Shetlands.

Have about 200 exlana, and a pile of easy care.

What I'll say is that the best of them are just about all the same, but they do different jobs often, different ground, different markets etc.

As a ewe producing fat lambs, they all do a job and do it well if you are good at your bit and manage them and the ground well enough.

But if I had to have only one maternal breed, id go 100% exlana.

Would anyone comment on if one breed is more healthy than others?


Have a mixture of ewes here while we have been expanding, mostly scotch mules from aberfiled, tex cross mules and a few cheviot mules. Generally buying in draft ewes (cheviots or blackies), (but moving away from blackies) and breeding females from them.

Do you find the likes of exlana breed do they have a strong will to live and your losses are quite low?
A genuine question, not just pub talk where you lose a couple a year.!!

Getting a bit fed up of how often the knacker lorry is here. Various things - mastitis, opa, pasturella/ pneumonia. But some just seem to have no spirit in them to live.

 

[pgk]

Below is a quote from the previous thread ''Easycare or Exlana'' https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/easycare-or-exlana.162932/

We do occasionally buy in other wool shedding tups for comparison (it is important to know how rapidly you are improving and how far ahead/behind the rest of the market you are)
The animals we buy in from unrecorded flocks are consistently behind our animals in all production traits---the most reliable and easy to measure trait is possibly 8 week weights , the lambs from bought in rams are on average about 5% lighter than those sired by Exlana rams
In maternal traits those rams bought in from unrecorded flocks in recent (ish) years all come within the bottom 12% of the BLUP analysis

Firstly I will openly disclose an interest having bought a tup from TimW 3 years ago and last year one from the Exlana sale. Both bought on EBV's as we had bought three easy cares on sight in previous years, best looking lasted one year with us and we killed all its lambs due to bad feet. We started with 30 Easy Care ewes and ram from Iolo.... Then started crossing our pedigree Lleyns and found some first crosses fully shed. Kept those lleyn ewes n kept crossing them to Easy Cares. Few Lleyns left went this time to a Texel. Now put all shedders to the Exlana tups. Ewes are as milky as Lleyns, less mastitis now possibly because all lamb outside also better bags from Lleyn me think. Feet generally better than lleyns but we are ruthless in culling lines with bad feet. Killing out percentage improving year on year and homebred out of Tim's ram are bigger ewes and more lambs near the 22kg they pay locally. Overall too high a percent of O grades but last crop all finished on grass having never seen the bucket. Looking forward to seeing how lambs of new Exlana perform back to Tim ewes. More mixed coats but great will to live and did not lay a hand on any woolshedders bred pure this year. For us the attraction of Exlana is the records behind them and that we can now buy MV accredited rams.

 

[CopperBeech]

Would anyone comment on if one breed is more healthy than others?


Have a mixture of ewes here while we have been expanding, mostly scotch mules from aberfiled, tex cross mules and a few cheviot mules. Generally buying in draft ewes (cheviots or blackies), (but moving away from blackies) and breeding females from them.

Do you find the likes of exlana breed do they have a strong will to live and your losses are quite low?
A genuine question, not just pub talk where you lose a couple a year.!!

Getting a bit fed up of how often the knacker lorry is here. Various things - mastitis, opa, pasturella/ pneumonia. But some just seem to have no spirit in them to live.

Obviously its always going to be a bit skewed, as we have different numbers of different things. However, i'd say on the whole, the exlana, and best of the easy cares are pretty much very low hassle. No strike, no cast ewes, very low levels of mastitis, or other ailments etc.

You always pick up the odd dead ewe, but seem to pick up proportionately less wool shedders (and shetlands) than anything else.

Mules win stakes for randomly keeling over!

 

[Tim W]

I made a new years resolution 18 months ago
--''I will find out why every sheep dies and act on it''--

Big ambition and I must admit I haven't done a PM on every animal but we have done a fair few and run countless diagnostics .
We screen regularly for MV/CLA/OJD/Toxo/Enzo
We assess mineral status regularly too
We try to allocate a reason for death on any animal that we reasonably can

We then record & use this information to build up a disease risk profile for every flock
As a decent database emerges over the years we can eliminate animals that we believe may be prone to problems ---mastitis/feet/strike etc

This all helps to give us a healthy productive flock and hopefully this is something we can pass on to our customers
All this work is expensive but I believe that it pays off in the long run and it has certainly increased my understanding of some of the ways in which sheep chose to die

 

[CopperBeech]

I made a new years resolution 18 months ago
--''I will find out why every sheep dies and act on it''--

Big ambition and I must admit I haven't done a PM on every animal but we have done a fair few and run countless diagnostics .
We screen regularly for MV/CLA/OJD/Toxo/Enzo
We assess mineral status regularly too
We try to allocate a reason for death on any animal that we reasonably can

We then record & use this information to build up a disease risk profile for every flock
As a decent database emerges over the years we can eliminate animals that we believe may be prone to problems ---mastitis/feet/strike etc

This all helps to give us a healthy productive flock and hopefully this is something we can pass on to our customers
All this work is expensive but I believe that it pays off in the long run and it has certainly increased my understanding of some of the ways in which sheep chose to die

We have introduced a 'book of the dead'.. . . . . . I've got to admit, its kind of fascinating!

 

[Mutch]

I made a new years resolution 18 months ago
--''I will find out why every sheep dies and act on it''--

Big ambition and I must admit I haven't done a PM on every animal but we have done a fair few and run countless diagnostics .
We screen regularly for MV/CLA/OJD/Toxo/Enzo
We assess mineral status regularly too
We try to allocate a reason for death on any animal that we reasonably can

We then record & use this information to build up a disease risk profile for every flock
As a decent database emerges over the years we can eliminate animals that we believe may be prone to problems ---mastitis/feet/strike etc

This all helps to give us a healthy productive flock and hopefully this is something we can pass on to our customers
All this work is expensive but I believe that it pays off in the long run and it has certainly increased my understanding of some of the ways in which sheep chose to die

I made a new years resolution 18 months ago
--''I will find out why every sheep dies and act on it''--

Big ambition and I must admit I haven't done a PM on every animal but we have done a fair few and run countless diagnostics .
We screen regularly for MV/CLA/OJD/Toxo/Enzo
We assess mineral status regularly too
We try to allocate a reason for death on any animal that we reasonably can

We then record & use this information to build up a disease risk profile for every flock
As a decent database emerges over the years we can eliminate animals that we believe may be prone to problems ---mastitis/feet/strike etc

This all helps to give us a healthy productive flock and hopefully this is something we can pass on to our customers
All this work is expensive but I believe that it pays off in the long run and it has certainly increased my understanding of some of the ways in which sheep chose to die

I took a lamb in for PM last week clearly the obvious stuff I'd identify but the amount of detailed examination the vet did I think is a bit beyond me , on this occasion pastruella was suspected but never managed to culture it. Do you open up every sudden death lamb Tim?

 

[Tim W]

I took a lamb in for PM last week clearly the obvious stuff I'd identify but the amount of detailed examination the vet did I think is a bit beyond me , on this occasion pastruella was suspected but never managed to culture it. Do you open up every sudden death lamb Tim?

I tend to do all these myself---it's fairly straightforward (as long as they are fresh enough)