Terminal female conundrum

Ok so probably a stupid question.....

I keep a flock of terminal ewes to breed rams from, Charmoise as it happens. I keep about 100-120 ewes lamb them outside, treat them hard and produce and sell shearling rams and some ram lambs off farm. Usually aim to sell about 20-25 rams a year.

Obviously the rams which I don’t think are going to be good enough, I kill.

However, I’m now producing quite a large number of real smart ewe lambs each year. I often get asked to sell a small group of ewe lambs or ewes, and a ram or two to people...... who want to breed rams from them.

Up until now I’ve refused abs either kept them in the Cham flock, put them to something else or killed them, which is a bit of a shame.

The issue is, if I sell a number of people brewing flocks of Cham, based upon my genetics and hard work, I’m reducing my market for rams and increasing competition.......

At the moment people travel from all over and I’ve sold rams throughout England and Wales.

It’s getting to the point where it’s pointless increasing the ewe flock too much as I simply don’t want to be trying to sell massive numbers of the rams or running 300 terminal ewes etc.

So what do others do with good quality surplus females ?
 

Gulli

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Somerset
You may as well sell them, they'll just go and buy elsewhere and still be competition, take the money until you get to the point you aren't good enough to stay ahead of the game and move on
 

S J H

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Bedfordshire
Ok so probably a stupid question.....

I keep a flock of terminal ewes to breed rams from, Charmoise as it happens. I keep about 100-120 ewes lamb them outside, treat them hard and produce and sell shearling rams and some ram lambs off farm. Usually aim to sell about 20-25 rams a year.

Obviously the rams which I don’t think are going to be good enough, I kill.

However, I’m now producing quite a large number of real smart ewe lambs each year. I often get asked to sell a small group of ewe lambs or ewes, and a ram or two to people...... who want to breed rams from them.

Up until now I’ve refused abs either kept them in the Cham flock, put them to something else or killed them, which is a bit of a shame.

The issue is, if I sell a number of people brewing flocks of Cham, based upon my genetics and hard work, I’m reducing my market for rams and increasing competition.......

At the moment people travel from all over and I’ve sold rams throughout England and Wales.

It’s getting to the point where it’s pointless increasing the ewe flock too much as I simply don’t want to be trying to sell massive numbers of the rams or running 300 terminal ewes etc.

So what do others do with good quality surplus females ?
Just sell them and let people have a go at breeding them, if your customers are worth having they’ll stay with you. Most people breeding them will have think that anything with a set of rubbish is a breeder so will soon disappear.
 
Sell them for breeding at a price. What ever the customer wants they will pay for.
Aye I get that but I’m not sure I want to set up loads of folk in the area with ram breeding flocks. Is that a bad idea ? Do other folk do that?

I’m one of the only people for a very long way who keeps a decent sized flock, outside lambing, grass fed etc.

Just seems daft to set your competitors up in buisness ? But is this what other folk do? Just curious as I’ve no real experience of pures and pedigree sheep
 
You may as well sell them, they'll just go and buy elsewhere and still be competition, take the money until you get to the point you aren't good enough to stay ahead of the game and move on
That’s a fair idea. To be fair though, from what I’ve seen there would only be one equivalent flock (based on how it’s run and it’s size) and I just nicked their breeding ten years ago 😂

I have thought about cashing them all in and going with something different again. Maybe a shedding terminal this time 😉
 

Gulli

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Somerset
That’s a fair idea. To be fair though, from what I’ve seen there would only be one equivalent flock (based on how it’s run and it’s size) and I just nicked their breeding ten years ago 😂

I have thought about cashing them all in and going with something different again. Maybe a shedding terminal this time 😉
You've got plenty of years to sell the ewes before the smaller breeders catch you up then.
No suggesting cashing in the whole lot straight away but if there's money to be made selling the females then get them sold and make the money while you can
 

BAF

Member
Livestock Farmer
That’s a fair idea. To be fair though, from what I’ve seen there would only be one equivalent flock (based on how it’s run and it’s size) and I just nicked their breeding ten years ago 😂

I have thought about cashing them all in and going with something different again. Maybe a shedding terminal this time 😉
I mean...I'm quite interested in getting a few charmoise so you could just send a few to live with me 😉
 
You should sell them sheep, you never know they might go elsewhere and get better sheep than yours and end up selling superior stock to yours on your patch.
Very likely. I wouldn’t say mine are overly special, I just bought the right sheep to start and have let a fair amount of natural selection come in to play. I just leave them outside to lamb and get on with it.
 

Al R

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
West Wales
I can’t see many people wanting to handle any number of pure charmoise? I thought about it a few years ago purely for my own use but after handling the lambs crossed with mule ewe lambs I quickly decided against keeping/buying any ewes. If I wanted an animal that would dive at every mouse hole in the race going and try to destroy everything in site I would buy pigs 🤣
 

MRT

Member
Livestock Farmer
I can’t see many people wanting to handle any number of pure charmoise? I thought about it a few years ago purely for my own use but after handling the lambs crossed with mule ewe lambs I quickly decided against keeping/buying any ewes. If I wanted an animal that would dive at every mouse hole in the race going and try to destroy everything in site I would buy pigs 🤣

No refunds!!!
 

HarryB97

Member
Mixed Farmer
Competition will always exist and people will just buy from another seller if they can not from you. I would keep doing what you are doing as a good reputation will never leave you short of customers and able to charge a premium price. You are already many years ahead of anyone that decides to start breeding there own to sell so I wouldn’t worry.
 
Very likely. I wouldn’t say mine are overly special, I just bought the right sheep to start and have let a fair amount of natural selection come in to play. I just leave them outside to lamb and get on with it.
It's not a case of how special yours are or aren't, it's a case of others maybe having better and you sending others off to potential find them.

No matter how good anyone is at their job, it would be naive to assume there aren't others that are better, why give them an opening.
 

andybk

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Mendips Somerset
I very rarely sell females from my charollais flock , i will at a price for a few good ones though , what i do is replace maybe 25-30% of the flock every year , can make some easy decisions on older stock and culling and i also kill a lot of the shearlings after first weaning that dont rear properly , but progress is faster (hopefully) ,you get to see progeny from newer genetics a lot quicker , i used to get fed up of people telling me they had some of my rams ,well not sold by me but from my ewes and rams others had bought out the store ring etc .
that said i would be happy selling females if they went out my ram selling area across the south
 
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TexelBen

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
North Yorkshire
I can’t see many people wanting to handle any number of pure charmoise? I thought about it a few years ago purely for my own use but after handling the lambs crossed with mule ewe lambs I quickly decided against keeping/buying any ewes. If I wanted an animal that would dive at every mouse hole in the race going and try to destroy everything in site I would buy pigs 🤣
You must not be giving them enough cuddles, mine are very well behaved 🤣

They're not bad, really good at filling a race up if they're at the back, they keep the ones in front nice and tight
 
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BAF

Member
Livestock Farmer
Mine are horrible horrible c*nts to work with.
I will trade you 7 horrible horrible HORRIBLE barsteward torwen sheep for 21 of your horrible pansy charmoise! I was vaccinating lambs this morning and it surely took me longer chasing those 7 black f**kers and their half bred feral bloody offspring to get them to go into the old catching pen where ALL of their mates and then other lambs were eating, than it did to worm and jab the lambs! Normally the strokers are climbing into the bucket and trying to knock me down!

I love the swear filter on this forum 😂
 
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