Maternal tup for Texels

I'm not expecting them to grow or grade like a Charollais, they are here to try them for maternal traits and to try as a terminal on hoggs. From my small sample, and all maiden shearlings, they don't appear to have as good a natural mothering instinct as the Highlander. I won't be retaining any females anyway, unless I'm short on numbers later on and decide to keep a few of the Highlander Hoggs' lambs back.

Good luck with yours, we'll look forward to the reports.... :)
Thanks, I'll be judging them pretty harshly!
 

Qman

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Near Derby
I wonder if a Rouge would be a good cross? I think it could, they are excellent mothers with plenty of milk with a good frame.
 

pgk

Member
Been surprised at the ease of lambing of the chartex hoggs put to chartex this time round. So much so we are next time going to put all f2 generation hoggs back to homebred f1 chartex. Hoggs were a bit skittish so 3 lambed with one leg back, wouldn't have tried that with our pure texels. Any texels we had to assist will go to charollais as we have recorded some and their daughters which have not required assistance, works out at a third of the pure texels. However does mean we will have a flock of texels which can lamb texels unassisted, heavy selection criteria but should be worth it long term.
 
You won't beat a Zwartbles, you'll have a hard milky prolific easy lambing ewe and a good fat wether to sell fat, only down side is if you happen to be racist and don't like black sheep, the Zwartbles is an under rated ewe, I think initially everything was kept and so they have a bad name, but they are very good sheep (daughter had her first draw of lambs this week, 9 weeks old neither ewes or lambs have been fed, 43kg £107 apiece). As for Rousins, poor mothers and only enough milk to do one lamb properly, they'll rear twins but not make a very good job, you'll end up with store lambs at best(thats pedigree's)

Somehow we have 30 or so Zwartbles ewes, (don't ask ?‍♂️) despite being heavily biased against them, they are prolific, milky, and have growth. I don't flush them to keep them below 200% scanning

We put them to a Hampshire and the lambs (however unconventional) are very good and sell very well despite having a bit of head wool and being mainly coloured.

I've gone a bit mental and kept some of these crosses as ewes, and (despite wanting to hate them) I really like them, they are very good producers, as gimmers they scanned 190% without flushing, with zero barren. Hoggs scanned 150% and are rearing 140 and those with twins are coping ok but the lambs are starting to take creep now. They are amazing mothers and are pleasant to work with despite Hampshires being a bit on the looney side.

The down side to the Pure Zwartbles is that they are like keeping a Holstein as a suckler, and they take a bit more keeping in winter.
Feet can be a bit of an issue, but culling generally gets on top of that. Udders are a bit big and don't cope well with east coast cold dry spring weather.
Pure Zwartbles lambs do grow, but if they get past that young stage they get as hard as a Holstein store bullocks and they'll be 60kg before they're fat unless you feed them.
The crosses are powerful sheep and are a lot easier kept and managed than their mothers, but I'd rather see them a bit smaller.
A lamb only needs to get to 45kg so a ewe that's double that is a bit excessive IMO

You could well be right that the OP couk d use a Zwartbles ram, but the progeny with a Texel could be a pretty formidable Ovine with regard to size and eating ability.

I'm hoping I find the Roussin progeny to be better than you describe, but I'm not married to them so I'll press delete on them pretty quick if they don't fit in.
 

Ysgythan

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Ammanford
What are your thoughts on a maternal tup to put over mainly 3/4 texels for breeding replacement ewes?
We are just finishing lambing and I’ve had to intervene with to many, what breeds are going to inject some maternal traits back into the flock. Thanks.

What’s the other constituent part(s)?
 
A neighbouring Laird (or at least his Farm Manager) used to be a multiplier flock for Highlanders,

They've stopped doing it, but from what I remember, the Highlander of 10 years ago seemed to be a much different animal to those on the current Innovis website. They used to have wool everywhere, but they now look more like Texels or at least 3/4 Texel crosses. Much like the Lleyn.

Why aren't these breeders subject to the same scrutiny as some Limousin breeders?
I'm not sure I've ever seen a Highlander with wool everywhere, over here the main complaint is a lack of wool, even from the early days.
 

Ysgythan

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Ammanford
They originate from texel mules, which are a good ewe for me, but haven’t bought in for some years now. Texel mule worked well for me, shame I can’t breed them myself. Buying in is not a option.

I went on a farm walk some years ago now with a Texel breeder who kept crossing his commercial flock with a Texel and occasionally a maternal. He had tried many recognised maternal breeds, but reckoned the best thing he had tried was a Chamoise. Although I have to say they’re not the sheep for me. Buggy eyed pink little aliens.

In my own experience I haven’t deliberately put a maternal across Texel x ewes, but can say from a few examples when they’ve been caught by various errants, you can literally put anything on them and get good results.

We bred up from mules and found it doesn’t matter as much how many crosses of Texel there is in them, selecting the muley types pays off. We found this by accident as the breedier Texel crosses sold better as gimmers. We thought we were keeping the poorer ones for ourselves. This also applied to the tups. They were the retired stock tups from the pedigrees and harder to sell home breds, mainly triplet born.
 
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Al R

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
West Wales
I went on a farm walk some years ago now with a Texel breeder who kept crossing his commercial flock with a Texel and occasionally a maternal. He had tried many recognised maternal breeds, but reckoned the best thing he had tried was a Chamoise. Although I have to say they’re not the sheep for me. Buggy eyed pink little aliens.

In my own experience I haven’t deliberately put a maternal across Texel x ewes, but can say from a few examples when they’ve been caught by various errants, you can literally put anything on them and get good results.

We bred up from mules and found it doesn’t matter as much how many crosses of Texel there is in them, selecting the muley types pays off. We found this by accident as the breedier Texel crosses sold better as gimmers. We thought we were keeping the poorer ones for ourselves.

We buy in Glamorgan welsh, put our own BFL on them to make our mules and then our own texel on to make our texelX’s which are then still 1/4 welsh so keeps hardiness, some mothering ability, shelter finding skills and less cases of mastitis ?‍♂️

one of my workers saw the Charmoise and called it “a fu<king hippo with wool” :ROFLMAO:
 

Ysgythan

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Ammanford
We buy in Glamorgan welsh, put our own BFL on them to make our mules and then our own texel on to make our texelX’s which are then still 1/4 welsh so keeps hardiness, some mothering ability, shelter finding skills and less cases of mastitis ?‍♂️

one of my workers saw the Charmoise and called it “a fu<king hippo with wool” :ROFLMAO:

In the dim and distant past we had a flock of Glamorgans and Speckles put to the Suffolk. I don’t know if the feelings I have for the breeders of any of them are more respect or revulsion. The Glamorgan is a good ewe maternally but a bitch to deal with.
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
Have seen some pretty slack fleeced ones and some that are more wooly than most common breeds here with covered bellys, right up their neck and even with a bit on top if their head.

They were extremely variable at one stage, as the kiwi geneticists making the breeding decisions refused to consider ‘type’ as in any way important. I’ve not seen a large cross section of the breed recently, but I suspect Innovis would be trying to breed them to more of a type. I’ve resorted to breeding my own as much as possible, as I don’t particularly wish to pay into a corporate marketing operation any more than I need to, especially as they don’t seem too concerned about health status and finding Mv accredited sheep is complicated.

They do what they say on the tin ime, and have always thought they could have made much bigger inroads in the UK if they had considered a little selection on type from an earlier stage. Loose coated, woolly headed sheep crossed on Blackies by @Agrivator ‘s neighbours were never going to be sheep that would appeal to anyone that bases the value of a sheep on the curl of it’s horns.?
 

Al R

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
West Wales
In the dim and distant past we had a flock of Glamorgans and Speckles put to the Suffolk. I don’t know if the feelings I have for the breeders of any of them are more respect or revulsion. The Glamorgan is a good ewe maternally but a bitch to deal with.
Yes stubborn is their middle name! Why some just sit down and can’t be bothered to walk 100metres to new grass I have no idea? They’ll also turn on a dog and defend it to the death - hence why I have a huntaway now (y)
 
They were extremely variable at one stage, as the kiwi geneticists making the breeding decisions refused to consider ‘type’ as in any way important. I’ve not seen a large cross section of the breed recently, but I suspect Innovis would be trying to breed them to more of a type. I’ve resorted to breeding my own as much as possible, as I don’t particularly wish to pay into a corporate marketing operation any more than I need to, especially as they don’t seem too concerned about health status and finding Mv accredited sheep is complicated.

They do what they say on the tin ime, and have always thought they could have made much bigger inroads in the UK if they had considered a little selection on type from an earlier stage. Loose coated, woolly headed sheep crossed on Blackies by @Agrivator ‘s neighbours were never going to be sheep that would appeal to anyone that bases the value of a sheep on the curl of it’s horns.?
To be fair if you go beyond the lowland creep feeder reared Blackies and more into proper hill (die if you wish) type sheep, horns tend to be less of a focus.

But I know what you mean.
 

Al R

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
West Wales
To be fair if you go beyond the lowland creep feeder reared Blackies and more into proper hill (die if you wish) type sheep, horns tend to be less of a focus.

But I know what you mean.
How do creep and horns work? I’m having a tough enough job to stop ewes eating some corn I’m creeping lambs with as it is, got 2 round bale feeders upside down to stop the ewes in but they’ve flat packed 1 already :banghead: I don’t think my patience could stand creeping everything every year, 1 lot is bad enough
 

Agrivator

Member
Have seen some pretty slack fleeced ones and some that are more wooly than most common breeds here with covered bellys, right up their neck and even with a bit on top if their head.

And wool right down their legs.

I have come to the conclusion that the one breed which has a place as an ''improver'' of some of our traditional breeds is the Finnish Landrace. And the two main breeds which would benefit from an infusion is the Borderl Leicester and the bigger type of Lairg Cheviots.
 
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pgk

Member
How do creep and horns work? I’m having a tough enough job to stop ewes eating some corn I’m creeping lambs with as it is, got 2 round bale feeders upside down to stop the ewes in but they’ve flat packed 1 already :banghead: I don’t think my patience could stand creeping everything every year, 1 lot is bad enough
What is this "creep feeding" you speak of??
 

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