NZ suffolks.

[Aspiring Peasants]

Do you think fodder crops are without cost, or in any way better than away wintering on dairy grass?
In a wet winter like the last two years, sheep performance will also be considerably better either in a shed, or on dairy grass somewhere.

The only advantage of wintering on fodder crops is the potential of being cheaper (unless local tack is cheap of course) and the increase in OM on the cropped land, assuming it’s not somebody else’s. Sheep do ok on them overwinter, but certainly not great.

I agree 100% with this but it rather negates the sales pitch that you have to have ewes with big bellies to eat loads of roots etc in order to survive farming sheep.!

 

[neilo]

I agree 100% with this but it rather negates the sales pitch that you have to have ewes with big bellies to eat loads of roots etc in order to survive farming sheep.!

Animals with larger rumens in those big bellies will certainly be better able to make better use of forage. Good examples would be Romney sheep or most ‘native’ breeds of cattle.

Those big bellies do go hand in hand with lower KO% though, so not something I’d necessarily be looking for in a terminal sire...

 

[Aspiring Peasants]

Animals with larger rumens in those big bellies will certainly be better able to make better use of forage. Good examples would be Romney sheep or most ‘native’ breeds of cattle.

Those big bellies do go hand in hand with lower KO% though, so not something I’d necessarily be looking for in a terminal sire...

I agree but it brings me back to where I began, there are more important traits in a terminal sire than being born outside in the rain

 

[easyram1]

Don't come with your self righteous bollox to me.

If you took those particular sheep from where you are right now and brought them up here to bare fields they wouldn't be happy.
Disagree with that if you want and I'd think a lot more of you if you didn't turn everything into a super duper sales pitch and brag when you're one of the men who bred the types of sheep who became so undesirable that many commercial flocks won't go back to Suffolk for a generation.

I would not expect any sheep to be happy on bare fields on the point of lambing without some supplementary feed. So we manage our sheep and grass to ensure they lamb hopefully if all goes according to plan onto reasonable grass covers.
Regarding Sales Pitch the question posed was

Thinking about using these on a cheviot mules to and selling the Suffolk x gimmers as breeders. What are people thoughts on the NZ Suffolks

The first reply he received said

That quite a lot of them look like the residue of a UK Suffolk breeders shearlings, after many buyers have had their pick.
Unsurprisingly we strongly disagree with the above so we thought putting a picture of some of our Suffolk ewes might be more informative. We are proud how over 15 years we have transformed our NZ Suffolks so that they now look much more acceptable to us and to the normal UK buyer. ie not as tall and rounder backends, but still wedgy.
So now no one appears interested in our sheep so and we are getting criticised for our grass.
Re Super Duper sales I would suggest that I am not the only ram breeder who is trying to promote what he is breeding on TFF. Most of the others look to be doing a pretty good or extremely good job to me.
Re the demise of the Suffolk breed I am intrigued as to why you have this obsession with our Crosemanor Suffolks. Fact is that Suffolk membership peaked at about 2300 breeders in the 1990s when Suffolks sired >40% of all lambs killed in UK. This shrank to 22% of all slaughter lambs in the early 2000s and 12% by about 2010. We changed our type of Suffolk sheep in 2006. At that time many Suffolk breeders left the Suffolks and had no sheep or went for Texels or Beltex and a few went into Charolais. During that 30 years the Texel breed grew from nothing to over 2200 members and a dominant position in the UK sheep industry. I don't think Crosemanor Suffolks had anything to do with this massive change and any influence we had in terms of rams used or sold in the 1980's and1990's had truly evaporated in the early.2000's.

 

[Nithsdale]

I agree but it brings me back to where I began, there are more important traits in a terminal sire than being born outside in the rain

Unless of course you are outdoor lambing. Then being able to survive poor weather has to be considered

 

[M-J-G]

I would not expect any sheep to be happy on bare fields on the point of lambing without some supplementary feed.

Thats correct

So we manage our sheep and grass to ensure they lamb hopefully if all goes according to plan onto reasonable grass covers.

Which you are fortunate enough to have the climate for, we've had fields rested since Nov and they are barely green.
Zero concentrates is easy if you have grass for lambing.

 

[Hooby Farmer]

Bought a nz sufftex and nz texel this this year, I'm fairly happy. Split my ewes up into equal groups and an equal mix of suffolk x texel ewes and mules, as a test. Lambs at birth with the NZ side did have more vigour than my traditional texel but fairly similar to the Belclare X lambs. Scanning rates were much the same as normal years 197% over the 4 groups. I am seeing slightly more growth in my lambs but would have had to weigh from birth to be certain, but I'll know by who goes to market first. I've had Charolais rams before that have produced brilliant lambs but struggle if they get a hard wet year. Depends on each individual system I guess. I'm of the mind taste and see, if you don't try it for yourself you'll never truly know.

 

[Bill dog]

@M-J-G . I’m one of @easyram1 ’s repeat clients.
It’s not his good looks or sales pitch that I fall for , his tups are long lasting, and survive at lambing. They suit me, and my system.
Romney’s go to the nz texel, then they go to the Suffolk, and a couple of Charollais from @sheepwise.
And 1000 feet up north facing, I’ve feck all grass !

 

[M-J-G]

@M-J-G . I’m one of @easyram1 ’s repeat clients.
It’s not his good looks or sales pitch that I fall for , his tups are long lasting, and survive at lambing. They suit me, and my system.
Romney’s go to the nz texel, then they go to the Suffolk, and a couple of Charollais from @sheepwise.
And 1000 feet up north facing, I’ve feck all grass !

Lambing with no grass and zero concentrates/blocks, that's impressive.

I don't dispute the genetics or their ability BTW!

 

[Orkneyboy]

Always makes me laugh listening to everyone on here complain about how hard it is to farm “this far north”!

You southerners complaining about weather and grass have no idea at all.

I have 2 easyram rams, a Suffolk and a sufftex S, plus Hill cheviots / Shetland.
They’re put to ewes that are a mixture of Hill Cheviot, Shetlands and their X’s.
I lamb outside in May, on a farm exposed to the full force of the North Sea with zero shelter. You are never more than 500m from the sea with constant views across to Norway
The lambing fields will have had nothing grazing it since the previous September (bar a few geese) just to make sure their is enough grass for outdoor lambing to work.
I also have to choose the 2 fields furthest from the sea which are conveniently right below my house.

The easyram sired lambs have excellent get up and go, they grow well and are healthy sheep. Very few need help at birth.
They make good store lambs for me to sell at 5 months old. The lambs also never needed drenched or vaccinated for anything at all last summer after being rotationally grazed.
The rams themselves have also lasted well so far and are canny, correct sheep.

Do they produce lambs as good, weighty and chunky as a texel, UK Suffolk or Charolais would? No.

Are they as hardy in bad weather as my hill Cheviot sired lambs? No.

Are they probably the best terminal breed for my situation? Yes, I think so.

 

[Aspiring Peasants]

Unless of course you are outdoor lambing. Then being able to survive poor weather has to be considered

I agree, there's a balance between ease of lambing etc and adding value to your lamb crop through better confirmation
How far towards either route you go depends on your farm, your system and to some extent your personal preference.
I enjoy reading your lambing thread because you have developed a very successful outdoor system and done it based on ordinary UK sheep with no need to import sheep from half way round the world.
It wouldn't be for me although we do lamb twins outside in April.
I'm very pleased with these lambs, yes they were born inside but have been out since last week and have survived 2 very wild wet and windy days and nights at 900feet .
I'll get a lot of pleasure selling these

 

[M-J-G]

Always makes me laugh listening to everyone on here complain about how hard it is to farm “this far north”!

You southerners complaining about weather and grass have no idea at all.

I have 2 easyram rams, a Suffolk and a sufftex S, plus Hill cheviots / Shetland.
They’re put to ewes that are a mixture of Hill Cheviot, Shetlands and their X’s.
I lamb outside in May, on a farm exposed to the full force of the North Sea with zero shelter. You are never more than 500m from the sea with constant views across to Norway
The lambing fields will have had nothing grazing it since the previous September (bar a few geese) just to make sure their is enough grass for outdoor lambing to work.
I also have to choose the 2 fields furthest from the sea which are conveniently right below my house.

The easyram sired lambs have excellent get up and go, they grow well and are healthy sheep. Very few need help at birth.
They make good store lambs for me to sell at 5 months old. The lambs also never needed drenched or vaccinated for anything at all last summer after being rotationally grazed.
The rams themselves have also lasted well so far and are canny, correct sheep.

Do they produce lambs as good, weighty and chunky as a texel, UK Suffolk or Charolais would? No.

Are they as hardy in bad weather as my hill Cheviot sired lambs? No.

Are they probably the best terminal breed for my situation? Yes, I think so.

Don't the folks in Shetland say you Orkney dwellers ard a bunch of Southern softies?

 

[Orkneyboy]

Don't the folks in Shetland say you Orkney dwellers ard a bunch of Southern softies?

Yes they do, and they’d probably be right!
But I did hear that all the seasick vikings got off the ships in Shetland, whilst only the hardier types made it to Orkney and beyond

 

[Bill dog]

Lambing with no grass and zero concentrates/blocks, that's impressive.

I don't dispute the genetics or their ability BTW!

Oh don’t worry, I feed loads. Ewes have been on cake for a month now as the forage rape ran out of puff. They also have optilix blocks, and when they come down to the 2 saved grass fields to lamb, they will get Brinicome easifeed treacle rather than cake . In no way am I a zero cake zealot, I’m way too thick !

 

[jamesy]

@Orkneyboy is a sight to behold out there bare chested on a sleety storm force May morning chasing Cheviots around.

 

[Devil's advocate]

How about entropean eyelids how do easy rams compare?

That is my biggest waste of time, messing with the damn things.

 

[jamesy]

The real question is not who has got most grass at a certain time of year ( try here in most July and Augusts when we resemble the Sahara). The proper question is what determines in this instance a sheep's performance. Is it environment or is it genetics? So 15 years ago when we first went down the route of breeding more functional sheep, we retained a few of our old unsaleable Crosemanor flock ewes, bought Wye Colleges very highly ranking performance recorded Amage flock of Suffolks and another small pedigree Suffolk flock from Devon. These were run alongside our imported NZ Suffolks that came over as embryos. These UK Suffolks were all tupped by pure NZ Suffolk rams. Three years later we sold all the UK Suffolks and their graded up offspring because they could not hack it on a grass only management system ( however good our grass was) All Suffolks in NZ ( and all other countries worldwide) were originally sourced from top East Anglian flocks such as Lawshall and Benacre. So why today are NZ Suffolks so different in their behaviour and body structure to the UK' version as to be almost a different breed. So our experience of running the two types side by side was that our UK Suffolks from the different sources could not milk retain or recover BCS on a grass only diet and consequently their lambs also would not grow as well as their NZ cousins. The 2 big differences we have noticed throughout is that the NZ sheep graze much more aggressively and also had bigger rumens, when compared to our UK sheep. Having a bigger engine under the bonnet is obviously important if your primary aim in life is to convert forage and NOT concentrates into milk and meat. So our experience tells us that it is the genetics and not the environment that counts. The fact that our rams of all breeds can and do thrive in all parts of the UK supports this theory.

Are your NZ Suffolk’s not now due UK citizenship or are they desperate to hang on to the NZ heritage of their ancestors?!

 

[neilo]

How about entropean eyelids how do easy rams compare?

That is my biggest waste of time, messing with the damn things.

IIRC it’s caused by a recessive gene. If you are having lots then I suspect those genes must be in your females, as well as any rams you are using. A simple change of ram breed/breeder won’t stop it if that’s the case, unfortunately.

As a genetic variation, it will always occur in any population, at a low frequency. Any responsible breeder should cull any lambs that exhibit the problem, end of, otherwise that frequency will increase. If you are getting enough to be a problem then it would suggest you have been buying/breeding from lines that should really have been hung up.

Unfortunately plenty of breeders, across all breeds, don’t see it as a issue that deserves a cull tag, so the problem persists. It should be almost non-existent by now, regardless of breed or breeding.

 

[farmer james]

How about entropean eyelids how do easy rams compare?

That is my biggest waste of time, messing with the damn things.

I would expect them to be fine, as I understand it is an inherited condition, so any animal affected gets culled, I reduced the incidence in my Suffolks to just one case in the last few years, I just notch the ear tag as a DNK( DO NOT KEEP) reminder, simple and effective.
FJ

 

[Jmorrow]

We have been using nz suffolks for 5 years moving away from our original three way cross system texel x charollias x suffolk and very happy with them we use them for there maternal traits rather than terminal traits crossing them with a lleyn then using a meatlinc or char ram on them to maximise hybrid vigor.
Ewes are smaller (60 to 75kg) easier lambed and more milk (higher 56 day weights).
Lambs have better get up and go, better growth from grass alone only downside is killout but is probaly balanced out by growth.
They don't sell as well in the store ring or at the market tbh but we sell diect to supermarket so doesnt affect us except any lambs left in november which are sold as stores.
Ewes lamb themselves in a intensive indoor system (ground is liable to flooding and to adopt triplets/quads onto singles), ewes are stocked on rotaional grazing system from 3/4 wekks post lambing at 12 ewes to a acre compare to the traditional tex x char x suf (80 to 100kg) at 8 to the acre.
Lambimg precentage has increased from 180 to 200 (probaly down to lleyn).
Ewe efficiency at 90 days has increased there output per acre and profit per acre.
Ewe lambs can be sold as replacements which has really incresed output and profit.

I dont know if i would use one as a terminal sire in a indoor sytem like my own but could see the benfit of using one in a outdoor system.