Castle Farm
Member
Watching the sale live. RB RG Williams (Live). Some very nice yearlings going through around the £200 mark.
Ross Lleyn sale.
- Thread starter Castle Farm
- Start date
- Location
- North Antrim
What was the overall trade like for them?
Pistonbroke
Member
We tried some years ago,bred pure and found there was always a far higher percentage of tup lambs so replacements were in short supply. Is that why there aren't more breeding ewes available? Other people told us they had the same trouble
ShooTa
Member
- Location
- Denbighshire - In the vale of Clwyd!
small flock only here - but we tend to get a 50/50 split.
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
Maybe the reason there aren’t more breeding ewes available is that, like many other breeds, for every one person that gets on with them, you’ll find another that wouldn’t ever give them house room again?
With such an ‘enthusiast’s’ breed, it’s a fine balance between under supply, and overdoing the market to the extent you’d be better off producing fat lambs.
- Location
- Dumfries & Galloway
Ah, there's a lot like me though... 15 years I've only ever bought tups (apart for a very rare 20-30 Gimmers just to top up flock numbers, once.)
Hell of a lot of folk run a closed flock. Breed enough replacements for themselves then just sell the rest fat. And cross the bottom end of the flock with terminal rams
I get a pretty consistent, even 50/50 split of ewe lambs
Hell of a lot of folk run a closed flock. Breed enough replacements for themselves then just sell the rest fat. And cross the bottom end of the flock with terminal rams
I get a pretty consistent, even 50/50 split of ewe lambs
Pistonbroke
Member
We started with thirty ewes,65 lambs but only about 15 ewe lambs. Similar numbers the following year
Up in the hills beside the heather of the pentlands I run a closed flock of 600 lleyn, inherited from my forward thinking father. He sold his scotch mule flock and bought lleyns at he same time that Jock MacGregor and Andrew Barr brought these strange fat little things called Texels to the UK.
There's a fair variation in types depending on whether you want the smaller, more profitable, upland ewe that produces a pair of R3L grade lambs, born outside and finished off grass, or the larger, concentrate fed, lowland ewe whose main advantage over the Texel is fewer cesareans and less mastitis.
They all still have that awful useless wool stuff to deal with though.
There's a fair variation in types depending on whether you want the smaller, more profitable, upland ewe that produces a pair of R3L grade lambs, born outside and finished off grass, or the larger, concentrate fed, lowland ewe whose main advantage over the Texel is fewer cesareans and less mastitis.
They all still have that awful useless wool stuff to deal with though.
- Location
- Dumfries & Galloway
Been a while since I read up on it but IIRC if you want to sell rams at these sales, the society have a stipulation you must sell X number of females. And the more tups you want to sell the more females you need to enter/ sell...
Thats why 1 or 2 breeders have a few different names they sell under and go through the ring several times at each sale... the different names combined - they can sell more rams without having to sell too many females
Thats why 1 or 2 breeders have a few different names they sell under and go through the ring several times at each sale... the different names combined - they can sell more rams without having to sell too many females
- Location
- North of Perth
That's pretty much what we do.most years would be 50/50
Castle Farm
Member
I run Lleyn. Always slightly more tup lambs than ewe lambs, but they suit me fine. Tups go off fat about now from April lambing around 45-50Kg. I sell a few tup lambs for breeding and all the ewe lambs are sold or kept to breed from. There are different types. Two of this years tup lambs. 25/4/2021.
