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Regenerative Agriculture and Direct Drilling
Holistic Farming
Mob Breeding
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<blockquote data-quote="hendrebc" data-source="post: 6766198" data-attributes="member: 70166"><p>Will only really work with big mobs of 500 females or more. I read somewhere that a wild population of 1000 head of something will never become extinct due to inbreeding as there is enough genetic diversity in that mob of whatever. So 500 females, and there would naturally he 500 males too, but of course being farmers we would take out the males we don't like and only use the best ones. But you'd need to use a lot of the males as breeders not just a few or you lose that natural diversity of the genes if you use one male too heavily. Put of 500 males chasing 500 female animals they would rut and fight and the strongest most aggressive males would get to breed most but a good portion of the poorer ones would have a good sneaky go as well.</p><p>I sometimes speak to a man from Sweden on FB and he runs a completely closed flock of 600 Gotland ewes. He hasn't bought any rams in over 20 years I think he said and all he does is choose his favourite 20-30 ram lambs that have fit into his strict selection criteria and uses them all on the flock in one big mob then culls them all after breeding. By using so many ram lambs it means one lamb can't put too much of his genes forward and keeps that genetic diversity going.</p><p>Seems to be working well for him anyway.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="hendrebc, post: 6766198, member: 70166"] Will only really work with big mobs of 500 females or more. I read somewhere that a wild population of 1000 head of something will never become extinct due to inbreeding as there is enough genetic diversity in that mob of whatever. So 500 females, and there would naturally he 500 males too, but of course being farmers we would take out the males we don't like and only use the best ones. But you'd need to use a lot of the males as breeders not just a few or you lose that natural diversity of the genes if you use one male too heavily. Put of 500 males chasing 500 female animals they would rut and fight and the strongest most aggressive males would get to breed most but a good portion of the poorer ones would have a good sneaky go as well. I sometimes speak to a man from Sweden on FB and he runs a completely closed flock of 600 Gotland ewes. He hasn't bought any rams in over 20 years I think he said and all he does is choose his favourite 20-30 ram lambs that have fit into his strict selection criteria and uses them all on the flock in one big mob then culls them all after breeding. By using so many ram lambs it means one lamb can't put too much of his genes forward and keeps that genetic diversity going. Seems to be working well for him anyway. [/QUOTE]
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