Edited to add: My quote function is misbehaving, so I have put them in inverted commas and italics.
"I appreciate the first quote was 4 sheep however, you throw in the arbitrary 50 which you seem to be pedalling away from like an Olympian in the velodrome as for
"There are the very rare breeds, but those are an different ballgame and I don't sometimes wonder if they might benefit from some outcrossing to maintain a good gene pool."
- because then they would be crosses and this is why many of the breeds are rare due to "historical breed improvements". This is why there are breed societies and sheep are registered and inspected to maintain the integrity of the breeds and to allow as wide a breeding selection programme as possible."
If you had read my post, I suggested that 50 might be a suitable number to start seriously considering producing minority breed tups, although I still feel this might be to small, but as I said in the post - it might have to do if the breed was suitably rare. This comment is part of a thread relating to costing sheep enterprises and I still feel that if you had 4 ewes, to cost in a saleable tup every year would be foolish. If you had about 50, I feel - you could probably cost in the revenue from a breeding tup each year. My 'rare breed' is Wilts Horns (although I have other sheep) and I only have 20, I would never assume to be gaining the revenue from producing a saleable breeding ram from them each year.
You can cross to improve a small gene pool (and here I truly am talking about very rare breeds) and then backcross to get something that would have 97% of the orignal genes of the breed in 4 generations, maintaining vigour, but that was my suggestion, I doubt many breed societies would do that, although I might think its a good idea, and was an aside to the discussion as a whole anyway.
"Big light you are spot on....The farm I mentioned with the place held together with string etc produces some of the best Texel sheep in the world. Small breeders do not = shite I'm afraid. Rare breeds also are not necessarily primitives! Dorset Downs are a rare breed!"
What I said was - if you had a flock of 4 ewes and you sold a tup as a breeder each year, you would soon get a reputation for producing shite, and I stand by that. I have a small flock, in fact most of us on here have small flocks.
However, as I stated, I wouldn't want anybody doing costings for their new sheep enterprise to project the income from a breeding tup each year, because either they wont get that money because they don't do as well in the shows as they think they might or they will sell on-farm in the first few years and stop getting repeat custom when their customers find better tups elsewhere.
There is no point in over-estimating your potential income when you cost an enterprise, because you are going to either be a) dissapointed, b) skint or c) both, which means you will probably give up with sheep and possibly become a little bitter in the process. I like what I do and I want to encourage people to farm sheep, but you wont do that by promising income that just isn't there. Much better, I find to under-anticipate your revenue, and make sure you can still turn a profit, then if you do make more, it is a pleasant surprise.