Rational choice of ram = growing pic's?

[Danllan]

I sell some breeders as yearlings and two-year-olds, but almost everything goes to people who speculate on potential breeders, or as stores, with stores being by far the majority.

So, for me both as a breeder and seller, what a ram looks like at one or two is not really of much relevance; what is most important is what he looked like at, say, four, five and six months old on grass - on the principal that his offspring will follow in his footsteps.

I've been pretty lucky with most bought-in rams (another plug for @Johngee - he's still going strong and I saw your ad ), not so with one or two others, but such is life...

But, having bred my own rams for a few years now, and having seen them at what I consider the most important age, I wonder if there are any out there who do keep photo records of rams as they develop. I'm going to do it with this year's keepers, at the least it will be interesting, at best it could be a real value adder when selling to those who sell-on stores as I do.

Thoughts?

 

[yellowbelly]

Thoughts?

Interesting. What breed/cross are you working with?
Where's the pics

Buy in all our commercial tups here on the premise that we can't afford top breed genetics just to breed a handful of replacements a year and we get a wider and more 'up to date' choice by letting the specialists do it for us. Picking the right ones from them is a whole different ball game though .

However, we have a small pedigree Lincoln flock, and a couple of years ago in anticipation that any future Stewardship schemes (that we now know will be ELMS) may require 'indigenous' breeds to be kept (i.e. Lincolns in Linconlshire, Norfolks in Norfolk, etc), I decided to try and make them a bit more commercial.

As we've already got plenty of wool, that's worth feck all, the obvious choice was to improve the carcase. I've been playing around with getting the myostatin gene into them.

This set of twins are three-quarter Lincolns and have both tested to be carriers of one myostatin gene. The aim will be to use them next year to try to breed a double carrying tup which will speed up the infusion of myostatins in our small grading up flock.

 

[Ysgythan]

I sell some breeders as yearlings and two-year-olds, but almost everything goes to people who speculate on potential breeders, or as stores, with stores being by far the majority.

So, for me both as a breeder and seller, what a ram looks like at one or two is not really of much relevance; what is most important is what he looked like at, say, four, five and six months old on grass - on the principal that his offspring will follow in his footsteps.

I've been pretty lucky with most bought-in rams (another plug for @Johngee - he's still going strong and I saw your ad ), not so with one or two others, but such is life...

But, having bred my own rams for a few years now, and having seen them at what I consider the most important age, I wonder if there are any out there who do keep photo records of rams as they develop. I'm going to do it with this year's keepers, at the least it will be interesting, at best it could be a real value adder when selling to those who sell-on stores as I do.

Thoughts?

Pedigree breeders will always go on trips to have a look in May/June. That’s when you see what’s there before the big push post weaning. More often than not they will then follow picks through to the sales.

the main problem with this as a seller is that if you invite ram buyers to look in June they’ll think you’re on the hard sell. Ram buyers in this country will generally try to show as little interest as possible in advance of a sale for fear of being “run”.

there a one breeder who posts a lot of photos at every stage up on Facebook. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate sales ploy or whether it’s just compulsive attention seeking, to the extent that I occasionally mute him for a rest. He tells you about every private sale so you can see that it does attract some buyers. He doesn’t disclose price though, but definitely would if they were bragable.

 

[andybk]

I dont do pictures but do go through lambs and see what proportion is killable off the ewe ,off grass (along with growth rates) thats the yardstick used to judge quality of rams we buy in , some rams have a few stonking lambs but very average other offspring that dont finsih easily , others have high number quick growing easily killable , these get used more often in coming years. looking at sedgemore fat reports regularly seems to work fine .

 

[neilo]

I’d be surprised if most ‘breeders’ don’t view their lambs as individuals, every single time they go through them. Is that the difference between a good ram breeder and a commercial farmer?
A good ram is born IME, he doesn’t just appear later in life. All of my home bred stock rams, and any I am willing to recommend to other pedigree buyers, have always been good lambs right through.

One of the reasons we record is that the ebvs are based on what a lamb’s performance is like at 8 weeks and scan weight, not how big and strong they grow after 18 months of hard feeding. That’s only one breeding tool of course, looking at and handling those lambs should also be used in breeders’ selections.

A ram that is very ordinary at slaughter weight, but then comes into it’s own as a shearling, will breed sheep that do the same, which is not what you want for fat lamb production. Rocking up at the ram sales and picking a smart shearling on the day will always be a lottery, unless the breeder holds that view. Many will use ‘shearling producers’ as they are aiming purely for shearlings that sell at Builth, Kelso, etc. Ultimately they are supplying a market created by the

 

[Ysgythan]

I’d be surprised if most ‘breeders’ don’t view their lambs as individuals, every single time they go through them. Is that the difference between a good ram breeder and a commercial farmer?
A good ram is born IME, he doesn’t just appear later in life. All of my home bred stock rams, and any I am willing to recommend to other pedigree buyers, have always been good lambs right through.

One of the reasons we record is that the ebvs are based on what a lamb’s performance is like at 8 weeks and scan weight, not how big and strong they grow after 18 months of hard feeding. That’s only one breeding tool of course, looking at and handling those lambs should also be used in breeders’ selections.

A ram that is very ordinary at slaughter weight, but then comes into it’s own as a shearling, will breed sheep that do the same, which is not what you want for fat lamb production. Rocking up at the ram sales and picking a smart shearling on the day will always be a lottery, unless the breeder holds that view. Many will use ‘shearling producers’ as they are aiming purely for shearlings that sell at Builth, Kelso, etc. Ultimately they are supplying a market created by the

that why we packed in EBVs, it was working against the “good lambs from day one”. I fully accept that may be contributed to because we don’t buy on index, don’t buy females and only run 25 ewes. EBV are clearly as much dependent on the “buy in” as fatty panter shearlings or magic circle ram lambs.

 

[yellowbelly]

A good ram is born IME, he doesn’t just appear later in life.

Very true.

We only have a few pedigrees but it's noticeable that every time you shepherd them (from birth onwards) your eye is always drawn to pretty much the same lambs.

These usually end up the one retained for breeding. Applies to both sexes.

 

[neilo]

that why we packed in EBVs, it was working against the “good lambs from day one”. I fully accept that may be contributed to because we don’t buy on index, don’t buy females and only run 25 ewes. EBV are clearly as much dependent on the “buy in” as fatty panter shearlings or magic circle ram lambs.

If you are confident enough to use your own rams, then there’s no reason you can’t use ebvs alongside knowing your ‘good lambs from day one’. One without the other isn’t considered as a stock ram here.
Not so easy if you are relying on another breeder’s rearing of a bought in lamb, especially when a lot seemingly only ever breed Champions.

 

[sheepwise]

Can't speak for others but we only sell a few as tup lambs with the rest run on as shearlings for sale or for our own use. Basically at weaning we choose what we believe to be the best half dozen lambs, these will definitely have been 'killable' at a much earlier age than weaning and been eye-catching favourites probably from day one. Any which didn't make the grade for any reason (growth,carcase shape,finish,etc) will have been sold by then or marked for selling and the remainder are run on grass only right through to shearlings which ensures we are producing natural fleshing sheep for our customers and our own flock. The recording thing is interesting as I know of some breeders who select their sale lambs purely on index and then feed them like hell to sale day which produces great looking lambs on the day irrespective of what they were like at 50kg. Indeed some of the "best" lambs on sale day only achieve such characteristics due to being big hard things at slaughter weight and therefore able to respond to serious feeding. It's not rocket science, buy your tups from a breeder who also has a commercial flock producing quality lambs or at least has a good handle on the commercial situation.

 

[Ysgythan]

Can't speak for others but we only sell a few as tup lambs with the rest run on as shearlings for sale or for our own use. Basically at weaning we choose what we believe to be the best half dozen lambs, these will definitely have been 'killable' at a much earlier age than weaning and been eye-catching favourites probably from day one. Any which didn't make the grade for any reason (growth,carcase shape,finish,etc) will have been sold by then or marked for selling and the remainder are run on grass only right through to shearlings which ensures we are producing natural fleshing sheep for our customers and our own flock. The recording thing is interesting as I know of some breeders who select their sale lambs purely on index and then feed them like hell to sale day which produces great looking lambs on the day irrespective of what they were like at 50kg. Indeed some of the "best" lambs on sale day only achieve such characteristics due to being big hard things at slaughter weight and therefore able to respond to serious feeding. It's not rocket science, buy your tups from a breeder who also has a commercial flock producing quality lambs or at least has a good handle on the commercial situation.

Was doing that 30 years ago. Buyers would want the tups, but at 50-100gns less than the run of trade. When we went over to doing lambs in the late 90s some of them got quite annoyed…