- Location
- north Wales
I leave them in till Christmas, but once it's May they have to look after themselves within reason. Late lamb is better than an empty ewe
Tupping 2017
- Thread starter trewern
- Start date
- Location
- Perthshire, Scotland
I have 2 reasons for wanting a tight lambing.
1. I have room for 250 at a time in the Polly tunnel, and the Cheviots have to be off their land for a week in mid April for the seasonal grazing lease terms. 250 cross ewes 20th march till 10th April then 250 Cheviots 17th April till 8th may.
2. I want lambing finished and 1st heptovac done before I start shearing which is about the 8-10th of June.
For me it's about concentrating work load on lambing then moving onto the next job instead of trying to do many different things at once.
1. I have room for 250 at a time in the Polly tunnel, and the Cheviots have to be off their land for a week in mid April for the seasonal grazing lease terms. 250 cross ewes 20th march till 10th April then 250 Cheviots 17th April till 8th may.
2. I want lambing finished and 1st heptovac done before I start shearing which is about the 8-10th of June.
For me it's about concentrating work load on lambing then moving onto the next job instead of trying to do many different things at once.
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
If ewes & rams are active, fertile & cycling, then you shouldn’t get more than a tiny percentage to lamb after one cycle anyway. I leave the ram in for two cycles ‘just in case’, but don’t normally get more than half a dozen or so ewes (more ewe lambs) lambing in second cycle.
If I left the rams in, IF those multiple repeat breeders ever conceived, we might end up with 4 or 5 late lambers to keep an eye on. Sure, we all remember the old girl that lambed a healthy part of twins in July one year, that never gave any bother. Everyone seems to forget the ewe that nobody saw under the bush for 3 days, or the one that had a couple of dead lambs whilst nobody was looking.
By the end of April/early May, I’ve been lambing long enough.
If I left the rams in, IF those multiple repeat breeders ever conceived, we might end up with 4 or 5 late lambers to keep an eye on. Sure, we all remember the old girl that lambed a healthy part of twins in July one year, that never gave any bother. Everyone seems to forget the ewe that nobody saw under the bush for 3 days, or the one that had a couple of dead lambs whilst nobody was looking.
By the end of April/early May, I’ve been lambing long enough.
What no Suffolk
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
How did Stage 3 go?
Mid-programming 7 donors here, with our ‘Stage 3’ next week, so just getting into the nail biting stage.
sheepwise
Member
- Location
- SW Scotland
My son was helping local Texel breeder at his AI day. There was roughly 80 ewes AI'd and 8 set up as embryo donors for about 50 recips. The breeder joked that the way the texel job is going they should really get rid of the majority of the flock and just keep the few elite donor ewes and treat them like egg producing battery hens!!
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
I’m informed that plenty are doing just that already. Saves on risking valuable ewes to caesars and mastitis apparently....
Mind, I can think of several in our breed that flush a disproportinate number every year too, and I suspect it goes on in most breeds.
Mixed. Had to dip into the pot for frozen embryos to use up the programmed recipients.
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
Can see this being a problem in texels when all this embryo breeding has gone on for a long time and the ewes could no longer lamb themselves or make any milk amymore. Wont be a problem for the ones doing the embryo work but further down the line for smaller breeders that do everyrhing naturally and have to lamb them and try and get something to rear their lambs. Will be even worse for commercial people keeping texel cross ewes and putting them back to a texel
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
It has potential to create a problem (in any breed) where donor selection is poor. Nothing wrong with the tool, just the way it’s used sometimes.
There’s a few out there that have already done that. I’m not a fan, but you know, live and let live and all that.
I believe if you’re flushing you need a core flock of ewes rearing lambs as a testbed for your potential donors, and to justify buying a tup.
The “elite” flushing flocks often make more money selling females than males as their surplus is of really good quality as their replacement requirement is so low.
However if they buy tups on share to spread the cost, sell a few sons well, sell a few daughters that others flush, then all of a sudden they’ve lost all integrity in the bloodline and hardly anybody can buy from it. They then go out and buy an expensive ewe from another “elite” flushing flock and the merry go round spins again...
Bugger.
Well, sort of. The plan was to put the frozen ones is as twins anyway so I was only 10 or so under par. We’ve had much worse results in the past believe me.
True not really fair of me to pick on texels there. Just thinking they are kept as crossbred ewes more than most other breeds, especially terminal breeds, and bred to be more extreme in shape so will probably affect them more in the long run when it comes to birth difficulties especially
- Location
- Dumfries & Galloway
2 is enough (for now
),.Felt like Noah and his Ark for a while there - 2 Suffolk's, 2 Texels, 2 Texel ewes, 2 Lleyns and 2 NCC's
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
It goes on in all breeds. A couple of years ago, I enquired about a ewe that I’d liked & bid (heavily) on. I was told that she’d had to have a CS as their wasn’t room to get your hand through her pelvis (she was a well grown ewe). She was a cracker though, so was going on an ET program.....
Not sure. The Texel market in Lanark is shifting. There’s still big money for the out and out breeder’s ram that no farmer would contemplate using, but strong shearling trade is feeding through to the selection of ram lambs. It used to be that without a sparky head you had no hope, nothing could redeem the lamb. Now the sparky heads only sell if they are part of the whole package - size, skin, shape. The correct leg in each corner, firm handling tups we used to pick up relatively cheaply are 5-10k irrespective of the head. That’s a big leap forward trust me.
Body lamb is Lanark Champion. He went to a big Aberdeenshire breeder.
When did you see a Texel photo from this angle?
This one sold to a consortium of Kelso shearling sellers.
OK at 7k, 9k and 15k then didn’t top the trade, but if there’s that money in shearling makers they’ll be turned out.
In the "olden days" of breeding rams (or any farm were ET isnt used) she would have gone to the ram and either died trying to lamb or gone to the vet for a cesearean. And hopefully not used for pure breeding again. Bet she will have a load of narrow pelvis daughters through ET though.
Dont see a problem so much if the breed is purely used as a terminal but texel (sorry picking on them again) cross ewes are very popular could be bad for them when any problems that develop get worse and it works its way down to the commercial flocks. Hopefully im worrying about nothing
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
With the cost of ET, the aim wouldn’t be to produce terminal sire rams from that ewe, but a few ‘special’ ones to sell to other pedigree flocks for decent money, and some daughters to hopefully breed the same. The anability to lamb naturally is thus spread very quickly, without the buyers necessarily knowing, until they come to lamb any daughters of course.