Thinking of changing to shedding sheep. Change my mind.

hendrebc

Member
Livestock Farmer
Just out of interest took this picture on my rounds earlier. This ewe is a pure lleyn and has almost shed. That's one of her lambs on the right the other ran out of shot.
received_3344957528861416.jpeg
received_3344957528861416.jpeg
 

hendrebc

Member
Livestock Farmer
I didn't keep them all, I had some to sell in some years. I did that for 7 years. This may be because I started with decent animals to begin with (you'll have to ask about TimW and others about that.... :ROFLMAO: ). The commercial flock had 400 ewes, I wouldn't have expected to cull more than 50 in any given year, which left me with the best to retain in the nucleus flock (although older animals were often demoted to the commercial flock to give me the newest genetics in the commercial flock).
Starting with the right stock to start with makes a huge difference. The reason I've had to cull so hard and have so many b flock ewes is because when I came home to farm in 2008 the only selection criteria had been size and nothing else. If a ewe had teeth and was likely to live to rear a lamb she would be kept another year. There were good ewes there but finding them has been a long old slog. Not helped by less than honest ram breeders :cautious:
But I had to start with what I had and we are getting there now.

Edit: Don't judge my dad too harshly for breeding crappy sheep. Most sheep farmers do what he did and have no selection criteria at all. You would be surprised how many just pick on size. He ran a flying flock for a long time and don't think really understood breeding or the smoke and mirrors that made the rams he bought look good. I think he hadn't realised how bad things had gotten with the ewes. A bit like boiling frogs where it gets gradually worse and worse and you don't realise. If he'd bought those poorer ewes I doubt he wouldn't have bought any more.
 

Six Dogs

Member
Location
Wiltshire
Worked for me - total flock size 500, nucleus 100 - lamb @ 180%, rear 160 + leaving approx. 80 ewe lambs to choose from (assume the 150% in your post to be on the safe side, that still leaves 75).

That gave me sufficient replacements to be pretty ruthless with both the flocks (although on the other hand, I wouldn't cull anything that hadn't offended me, so I did have some very old ewes, but I felt longevity was worth breeding for).

Well you must never have had a barren ewe or anything die!
With these figures I wonder why you aren’t still farming...
 

SteveHants

Member
Livestock Farmer
Starting with the right stock to start with makes a huge difference. The reason I've had to cull so hard and have so many b flock ewes is because when I came home to farm in 2008 the only selection criteria had been size and nothing else. If a ewe had teeth and was likely to live to rear a lamb she would be kept another year. There were good ewes there but finding them has been a long old slog. Not helped by less than honest ram breeders :cautious:
But I had to start with what I had and we are getting there now.

Edit: Don't judge my dad too harshly for breeding crappy sheep. Most sheep farmers do what he did and have no selection criteria at all. You would be surprised how many just pick on size. He ran a flying flock for a long time and don't think really understood breeding or the smoke and mirrors that made the rams he bought look good. I think he hadn't realised how bad things had gotten with the ewes. A bit like boiling frogs where it gets gradually worse and worse and you don't realise. If he'd bought those poorer ewes I doubt he wouldn't have bought any more.

There were some advantages and some disadvantages of coming from a non-farming background. One of which was that I didn't have anyone else's expectations or past policies to deal with. The other was that the business had to make sense on paper before I invested in it.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't always buy the perfect sheep (I had lots of part shedders that were offered at a good price, but performed in every other way) but maybe I had less far to go than other people.
 

Poorbuthappy

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Devon
I didn't keep them all, I had some to sell in some years. I did that for 7 years. This may be because I started with decent animals to begin with (you'll have to ask about TimW and others about that.... :ROFLMAO: ). The commercial flock had 400 ewes, I wouldn't have expected to cull more than 50 in any given year, which left me with the best to retain in the nucleus flock (although older animals were often demoted to the commercial flock to give me the newest genetics in the commercial flock).
To add: Not many of my home bred replacement lambs didn't make the commercial flock for lambing offences etc, but maybe if I was breeding up from something else or trying to correct a badly performing flock then maybe it would have been different. I did always try to buy sheep from poorer ground than I had, which admittedly wasn't hard in Hampshire...
Ok, if you did that for 7 years, did you start with all young ewes?
 

SteveHants

Member
Livestock Farmer
Ok, if you did that for 7 years, did you start with all young ewes?
No, I bought a reasonable age profile, although quite heavily weighted towards old ewes - in that first year I kept a lot of replacements, which, I suppose meant I had quite a good cohort of reasonably young ewes.

To be clear - that was what I ended up doing after I'd got past my initial phase of flock building, so yes, replacements would have been significantly higher in years one and two, I did not have the figures to determine who went into my nucleus until then, so I just kept any lambs that were good.

Maybe it would have come unravelled at some point and I would have had to take the hit and either breed more ewes or buy them in.
 
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SteveHants

Member
Livestock Farmer
Just had a look back through some records and there was no year in which I lost (rather than culled out) 30 ewes, 20 seems to be my max. I did have a sh!t year for lamb losses before I had fully twigged to athlemintic resistance in autumn 2 (on a piece of ground which I then stopped bringing lambs onto and ended up just grazing a few rams)

That could be due to many things:
1) A reasonable ammount of mixed grazing keeping worm counts low
2) Twigging to resistance early on and constantly analysing wormer usage
3) No flystrike to speak of in the majority of places I had sheep (I had some floodplain stuff once and saw a bit of fly, only ran shedder ewe lambs for replacements on it though.
4) Commercial flock lambing over a large area - maybe this reduced mismothering?
5) Not really touching lambs until weaning unless they were in the nucleus flock, I'm semi-convinced the lack of gathering stress helps
6) Lots of chalk down (commercial flock, nucleus flock was on very wet low ground), good for feet, had shelter etc.
7) Not a lot of barren ewes - could be Exlana profligacy, could be flushing, could be a lot were young initially who knows?
8) Actually having more replacements available than the theoretical 75 in every year I did it, because, in reality I often had more ewes than 50% and rearing percentages higher than 160%, especially in my highest performing nucleus ewes, but I like to underestimate, which is why I quote 160%

I'd very much like to do it again and analyse it further.

I think my "experiment" could be adapted to suit different situations, your nucleus flock could be a lot bigger (say, 30-35%) and you could run a sweeper to select for fecundity....

Edited to add: It is now apparent that I've been marking work on reflective processes, because I'm doing it here, rather than actually marking the work..... :ROFLMAO:
 
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Boso

Member
What the shedding community lacks/needs is a decent terminal shedding breed or maybe a few years time to get exlana just a bit more muscular than some allready are.
This would make the transition to shedders so much easier and less expensive.

Transition towards a single breed (dual purpose) would also be something I'd be interested in from a management perspective.
 

SteveHants

Member
Livestock Farmer
What the shedding community lacks/needs is a decent terminal shedding breed or maybe a few years time to get exlana just a bit more muscular than some allready are.
This would make the transition to shedders so much easier and less expensive.

Transition towards a single breed (dual purpose) would also be something I'd be interested in from a management perspective.

I like this as an idea, but whilst live markets select on things other than actual carcase quality, a cross with a wooled breed produces fat lambs that do well in the sale ring.
 

exmoor dave

Member
Location
exmoor, uk
What the shedding community lacks/needs is a decent terminal shedding breed or maybe a few years time to get exlana just a bit more muscular than some allready are.
This would make the transition to shedders so much easier and less expensive.

Transition towards a single breed (dual purpose) would also be something I'd be interested in from a management perspective.


Go along to the exlana sale and you'll find what you describe, there is a bit of difference amongst the group of breeders
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
I like this as an idea, but whilst live markets select on things other than actual carcase quality, a cross with a wooled breed produces fat lambs that do well in the sale ring.

I like the idea of doing away with wool, but to describing pure Exlanas (or unadulterated Lleyn for that matter) as having anything other than mediocre carcass quality would surely be a stretch?
Would it not be fair to say that, even if those sheep had woolly costs, they would still be penalised in a live market full of continental x lambs?
 

Green farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
I like the idea of doing away with wool, but to describing pure Exlanas (or unadulterated Lleyn for that matter) as having anything other than mediocre carcass quality would surely be a stretch?

The vast majority of my lleyn crosses, ie 75% lleyn out of a purebred lleyn sire, All killed out at U grade this year. I put it down to the fact that I bought the fattest lleyn ram I could. I suspect he was one where abit of texel Gene's sneaked in at some stage. Cannt see why the same couldnt be done to a shedder with a peeling texel ? As long as they dont dilute the maternal aspects.
 

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