Ram breeders

Danvd

Member
Location
Sussex
are there any texel ram breeders focussing heavily on breeding for worm resistance? We are getting increasing resistance to worm drenches.
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
Are you keeping Texel cross ewes? I would suggest that your biggest benefit will come from increasing the worm resistance in your ewe flock, which of course is inherited by your lambs too.

For maternal Texels, there would be Innovis (AberTex) , Peter Baber and @easyram1 (I assume he is selecting for FEC ebvs). There will, no doubt, be others.
If you're thinking of more terminal sire Texels, I wouldn't know where to start.
 

Danvd

Member
Location
Sussex
Are you keeping Texel cross ewes? I would suggest that your biggest benefit will come from increasing the worm resistance in your ewe flock, which of course is inherited by your lambs too.

For maternal Texels, there would be Innovis (AberTex) , Peter Baber and @easyram1 (I assume he is selecting for FEC ebvs). There will, no doubt, be others.
If you're thinking of more terminal sire Texels, I wouldn't know where to start.
Thanks neilo. I see what your saying now. No, at the moment we buy in Suffolk mules and then put them to mainly texels.
 

wee man

Member
Location
scottish borders
As Neilo says your ewes will have the biggest effect on worm burden on your pastures. If all goes well you high resistance lambs should be slaughters just as their resistance to worms starts to show it's self giving you almost no benefit. The best thing you could do is get a deal with someone to breed you suffolk mules from tups of your choice i.e high fec ebv and high maternal ebv.
If you are determined to deal with it only from the terminal ram point of view then you actually need highly resilient texel tups not resistant tups. Sil in NZ has an resilience ebv but i don't think anyone in the uk is using it.

For those that aren't sure of the difference between resistance and resilience.
A resistant animal produces very few worm eggs so you have clearer pastures and less worm challenge for the flock to deal with but their growth rates may be affected while they deal with the challenge.
Resilient animals are unaffected by their worm burden i.e they maintain good growth rates even with very high fec counts but they may be putting a lot of worm eggs on to the pasture increasing the challenge that they and the rest of the flock have to cope with.
 

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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