[steve_pr]

Reading some of the recent threads about the price of lambs got me reflecting on a couple of recent sales and provides real food for thought as to the real value of a ram (as well as the price of a ram, which is not the same thing!).


We have two breeds, Coloured Ryelands and Greyface Dartmoors. At the recent Ryeland annual show and sale in Ludlow a significant number of the Coloured Ryeland Ram yearlings failed to make the reserve price (100 guineas), most that did sell went for under 200 guineas and only 4 (including 2 ram lambs) went for more than 250 guineas. If that is what you get (or not!) for a pedigree animal which has cost you £15 to register, plus sale fees and transport then, even with the price of lamb as it is, they are practically worth more dead than alive!!!


Now there is a brisk demand at present for coloured rye lands (an ad for 2 of our 2 year old ewes and a ram on preloved got lots of response and sold pretty promptly). The situation with the Greyface Dartmoors is way worse than this - seems like they have fallen out of favour and good registered animals (rams and ewes) will likely be going to market since I need space for newcomers - which is a real shame.


At the same time having observed furious bidding for yearling rams (admittedly the good ones!) I got to wondering why everyone wants a yearling ram rather than a 3 year old?  We have several 3 year olds on site, and believe me their bits still work perfectly well and they know exactly how to service the ewes with the minimum amount of effort compared to the youngsters who seem to spend all their time constantly sniffing everyone!


Think about it.  Do you sell your best lambs? Probably not.  It is usually a case of "keep the best and sell the rest" so buying a yearling means you are already getting the "rejects", and paying top price for a ram that has no proven record of fertility. However, think about what happens 2 years down the line. The 3 year old ram has worked hard and covered all the ewes they can, and you are starting to find that he can only go to a reducing number of ewes because he has sired all the rest in the past 2 years.  So off he goes to sale. Now as a 3 year old, he is frowned upon and the price is low, despite the fact he has plenty of vigour left and he was the "best" of the crop a few years ago and is still a top notch sire, but at a bargain price.


Am I missing something here or am I the only one who prefers to buy 3 year olds? (Or is it just my Yorkshire blood making me tight with the readies!!!!)

[Coximus]

one of the many quirks of the livestock world - I brought a texel ram aged 5, for cull value as no one wanted him once - £90 odd, he did the deed 55 times and produced 3 pure texel ram lambs, 2 of which fetched close on £200 and one was retained, he was sold a year later for yep, you guessed it £100!

But people went made for his unproven sons - I assume as many folk with comercial mule flocks DO NOT retain ewe lambs as replacements but buy in every year, so a young ram could give 3-5 years of service, and on a farm with say 500+ ewes, he need never risk coming over his daughters even if they are retained.

[roddycm]

I always say the ram is half your flock so its best to buy the best you can. Its the easiest way to make improvements across the whole flock.

Ram value depends on breed and then on how good the particular ram in question is. Does he meet all the breed criteria? has he won prizes? Does he come from a good bloodline? etc etc and so on!

Buying privately will usually be cheaper than buying at auction if its a quality animal. Buying at a time of year when no one else wants to buy is also good for a bargain, as long as you have the room. At the end of the breeding season in preparation for next year is a good time for a real bargain! I agree buying older from someone reliable is best! If he has lasted well and still looks good you know exactly what you are getting! Its a funny old game! Definitely not worth registering anything that isn't really excellent, the ones that don't make the cut are best sent for the freezer! In my experience at least, but then again I am quite tight with money haha 

[SallyintNorth]

It's not just you, steve_pr.  At the tup sales our first port of call is always the aged tups.  Our best buy was Perry, who had been a sale-topping Charollais as a shearling tup.  We bought him aged 3 for less than 1/4 of his shearling price.  He made a significant contribution to our flock, increasing the proportion of fat lambs hitting the top grades, and knocking a couple of weeks off their finishing time.  And as a big sturdy boy, his price in the ring at the end meant we'd spent maybe £2 / ewe tupped.  We breed our own replacements, so about 1/3 of our ewes now have his genes in them. 

[SallyintNorth]

It's maybe different with the rare breeds, but in the commercial tup world, the ones getting sold are by no means the rejects.  Our local commercial Texel tup breeder has 3000 ewes and at his main sale sells the cream of the crop, usually about 120 tups.  The ring is always packed and bidding fierce. 

Equally, crossing Leicesters are bred to sell, to be put on hill sheep for mules.  When I bred mules I did do well a few times, mind, buying aged tups from crossing Leicester breeders

[SallyintNorth]

I assume as many folk with comercial mule flocks DO NOT retain ewe lambs as replacements but buy in every year, so a young ram could give 3-5 years of service, and on a farm with say 500+ ewes, he need never risk coming over his daughters even if they are retained.

These days, increasingly, commercial farms do keep on the 1st generation Texel x Mule daughters. They're excellent sheep to produce a fat lamb crop.  We buy a pen of Mules every few years specifically to re-introduce the scope at the top of our breeding programme.  We bought a pen of excellent draft Mules last year, put them to our very best Texel tup, and have a good selection of very good ewe lambs to keep on.   They'll go to the Dutch Texel next year, and probably a Beltex/Texel after that, and we'll keep on the best daughters of those liaisons too.

For that reason, we only plan on two years per tup.  After that, if we do keep one on longer, he needs to be on either the oldest girls or the Mules in order to avoid his daughters.

[Keepers]

It's maybe different with the rare breeds, but in the commercial tup world, the ones getting sold are by no means the rejects.  Our local commercial Texel tup breeder has 3000 ewes and at his main sale sells the cream of the crop, usually about 120 tups.  The ring is always packed and bidding fierce. 

Equally, crossing Leicesters are bred to sell, to be put on hill sheep for mules.  When I bred mules I did do well a few times, mind, buying aged tups from crossing Leicester breeders

Agree, perhaps in the showing sheep world/rarebreed world yes the rejects may get sold, no idea really 

However I would only ever sell a tup that I would want to use myself, if I wouldnt use him on my own flock or if I dont like a single thing about him he will be eaten

An awful lot of people in the ram world will breed the best to sell

As for how much is a tup worth, I know alot of the older generation who go by the "ten good fat lambs" rule
So this year many people would be looking to pay around £600 for the tup, however it would differ hugely as to what recording/selection/testing the tup has been through or in the case of fed up, spray tanned ones for the big tup sales, how much has gone into making them look pretty 

[Big Light]

There's that many males available for most breeds i would suspect most "rejects"  end up in the butchers trade. I also query why the shearling should being much more expensive and have indeed bought older sheep for far less money than poorer shearlings are going for. Obviously there are less years breeding potentially in them and more likely to keel over aswell i guess.

However one thing possibly over looked is the genetics within the pedigree breed world therefore a "fresh" shearling tup is probably more saleable (especially in the breeds with smaller numbers) as unless ewe lambs have been sold then the number of buyers who won't have genetic matches / cross overs is potentially greater. whilst when a 3 shear comes to market in the pedigree world then some of his brothers / sisters will have hit the market and ther may be less buyers. However it certainly won't stop me buying wisley and getting bargains in the older tup market

The reality of the price of a tup is whats it worth to you - if you have more females to service - it's probably worth more, if you have a high quality sheep and the sheep you buy will improve that and produce lambs worth more then you work out your own budget . Each animal is a personal choice to suit your circumstances and budget :0)

[Old Shep]

bought a pen of excellent draft Mules last year, put them to our very best Texel tup, and have a good selection of very good ewe lambs to keep on.   They'll go to the Dutch Texel next year, and probably a Beltex/Texel after that, and we'll keep on the best daughters of those liaisons too.

This is very much like our plan for the next few years.  Could I ask please the reasoning for the order of the tups? ie Texel to the mules, Dutch on 1st crosses yr1, Beltex/tex yr 2?  Rather than any other combination?  We are just trying to plan our own tupping.  We have a good big Texel tup lamb which is going with the mules, but haven't decided whether to use another texel or the Dutch texel on the 1st / 2nd crosses.

[SallyintNorth]

We use the Dutch Texels on the first timers because they give lambs which are born small and active, with fine skins, and grow quickly into brick outhouses

The Texels are more inclined to give larger, chunkier lambs at birth, so are more suited to the roomy Swaley Mules and to other experienced ewes.  Texel lambs can be more dopey about getting onto the teat, too, so it helps to have an experienced ewe on that front too.

The Beltex/Texel is a new departure.  We had some bought-on Beltex x Swaley Mule ewes which have been tremendous, incredibly milky, excellent mothers, plenty of room, give really good lambs and rear them very well.  So we're hoping to get a some of those characteristics into the replacement ewe lambs from putting our Beltex/Texel tups onto our other ewes.  Plus the Beltex has a bit more shape in the back end, and we need a bit more of that every now and again to keep our grades high. 

[steve_pr]

Some good commentary in here and it is clear that there is a different perspective between the rare breeds/small scale flocks and the more commercial which is based on sound financial considerations.  Being firmly in the first category I can only accept the reality of life at the commercial end.


In response to Big Light I have a number of concerns about the genetic diversity in the smaller pedigree breeds. I'm not talking about the Castlemilk Moorits here (which I believe are all derived from less than 10 animals) but I am doing some analysis of old flock books and have found an astonishing amount of interbreeding.  Go 3-4 generations back and the chances that two rams share a common sire is very high indeed.  Now my observation would be that the more traditional breeders will claim that this is "keeping the purity of the blood lines" and "maximising the conformance to the breed standard". A more genetics-oriented perspective is that there is a dangerous concentration of just a few "super sires" who are the great, great grand sires for a majority of all the rams registered in any year. I'm not entirely convinced that is a good long term strategy to maintain the genetic strength of the breed.
 

[Porterlauren]

Buying an unused shearling tup, over a five year old animal, is, in theory (if bought from the same flock) buying 5 years worth of genetic improvement. If buying from a less known source, I guess it also hasn't run with lots of other ewes, and been on a couple (at least) of different farms. . . . so less chance of bio security issues. Just a couple of thoughts, might not be anything in it.

Personally I like to buy ram lambs.

[Old Shep]

Thank you Sally ITN  .

[Marches Farmer]

I prefer to buy an aged ram if I have a lot of first timers - the rams know what to do even if they don't and it keeps lambing to around 19 days, which suits our system.  I am puzzled by the popularity of Texel and Beltex - farmers in this area have moved away from them in increasing numbers in the last few years, partly due to lambing problems and also because of Texel Throat.

[Old Shep]

What have they moved to Marches?  And what is Texel throat?