The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: artscott on September 24, 2014, 12:56:09 pm
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My black Welsh mountain sheep normally stay all together in one flock. But I have some ewe lambs this year that I want to avoid breeding, I will split them and just put the older ones with the tup. How long will I have to keep the ewe lambs away from the tup before they stop coming in to estrus and can all go back into one flock?
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Well, my Shetland ram caught one ewe :eyelashes: who was supposed to be having a year off, and she lambed on July 10th - so he was busy around Valentine's day.
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I don't want to worry you but you probably want to change "I will split them" to "I have already split them" fairly sharpish I would have thought.
One of my neighbours lambs very early (in time to get them ready to slaughter at Easter) - his ram is already impressing his lady friends :bouquet:
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Either you need to keep the ewe lambs separate until next year when they can be tupped, or you need to keep the tup separate. That is, if you want to be sure there are no surprise lambs - it depends on how important it is to you.
Our preference is to keep the tup elsewhere, with a companion, for the whole year apart from tupping time. This allows the ewe lambs to learn from their dams when new lambs appear, and may help with their own mothering when they first lamb themselves. Do you have a wether you could keep with the tup as a companion?
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I don't want to worry you but you probably want to change "I will split them" to "I have already split them" fairly sharpish I would have thought.
One of my neighbours lambs very early (in time to get them ready to slaughter at Easter) - his ram is already impressing his lady friends :bouquet:
Absolutely. My neighbour lambs his Suffolks in December and January, ready for the Easter lamb market. We wean at 16 weeks, putting an old non-breeding ewe with the ewe lambs to lead them up the field when we call, the ram lambs make up another set and the rams are separated from the ewes 49 weeks of the year, and from the other rams once they start getting really revved up for tupping in a couple of weeks' time.
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Yes, my wording was a little wrong, I did split them up in mid August before he was showing any signs of interest in the ladies, so hopefully there will be no early surprises. I don’t really have enough space to keep him well away from them all the time, he would have to be in an adjoining field and he made a bit of a mess of my fences last year by doing that. I think I’ll just keep him away until a bit later (maybe mid/end November) and let him in with all of them.
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surely mid to end November is peak breeding time for welsh mountains?
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Our Badger Face ram doesn't generally wind down until late December.
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As I said, our Shetland was still at it in early Feb ::) ;D - and our neighbours breed BWM to lamb in late May/June