The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: cheryl on March 31, 2011, 01:48:12 pm
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Hi all, I'm after picking the brains of some people with more experience than me (which is to say *any* experience!)
I'm going to be getting some sheep in the next month or two. I'm looking for badger faces, and have been offered some unregistered ewes. My question is, will the fact that they're unregistered make it very difficult to sell their lambs?
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hi will make no difference, obviously they won't be pedigree but if you just want a few sheep then there will be a market for them. good luck
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My Shetlands arent registered, its nice to get the registered stock and theres a bit of a premium if you come to sell them but since ours are for meat and land management it wasnt the most important factor.
Ideally tho I would have got registered ones, as it adds an element of interest and means you are supporting the pure breed more.
They tend to taste the same tho, delicious!
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Thanks guys, was just wondering because the last thing I want is to be stuck with lambs I can't sell or lamb I don't have space to store!
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You can apply for registration as foundation stock if you want to. In this situation the sheep are inspected by a Badger Society member and if they think they are OK, they can be registered on merit. If you then put them to a pedigree ram, the offspring can be registered as 2nd generation foundation stock. When these are then put back to a pedigree ram again, the lambs can be registered pedigree.
Total upgrade time, 4 years. My daughter has done this with her Badgers. Helps to keep the breed vigourous by making sure there is always fresh blood coming in to the pedigree flock.
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Really? I never knew that. You learn something new every day (well, several times a day if I'm on TAS!)
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I don't know anything about Badger Faces, but in general you are far better to buy registered stock from a reputable dealer, particularly from the minority breeds. The provenance of non-registered stock is effectively unknown, so you could be buying something which looks like the breed you want but has blood from other breeds in it. Once you get to 1/16th dilution, it is difficult to see the admixed blood - for example someone may have used a texel way back on some of his shetlands, then passed the progeny off as purebred. After a while, it will be very difficult to see any texel characteristics, however, genetically they will be in there. Pure breeds are important for the future, each breed preserving certain specific characteristics, such as adaptation to local climatic conditions, rather than there being a hotch-potch generic 'British' breed.
Some breeds which are numerous can be upgraded as described by VSS but many, such as Hebrideans and I think Shetlands, cannot be, so the purity of the breed back since registrations began can be verified.
If you just want to eat your lambs, then there is no point in buying registered stock, and you would be doing nothing to support the breed anyway. But if you want to sell pedigree stock to other breeders, once you have learned enough about the breed to feel qualified to do so, then you would wish that you had started off with pedigree stock in the first place. The thing about selling pedigree stock which you should remember is that only certain lambs are good enough for registration, so you would still have those which didn't make the grade to sell for meat, or as unregistered stock. Which gives a hint, that by buying unreg animals, you could just be acquiring someone else's rejects. They won't taste any different but they will not be good examples of the breed.
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it is interesting that sheep are allowed to be graded up as already posted to be registered stock
pigs on the otherhand are not allowed this privilege as are cattle although when the continentals first came in they allowed a grading up scheme :pig: :cow: :sheep: :wave:
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Some sheep. Does it depend on if they are from a 'manufactured' breed, by which I mean one such as Suffolks, which were bred from Norfolk Horn and um...forget which other breed, to produce a type - so if they conform to the type and breed true then effectively they are that breed? Whereas those breeds which don't allow grading up are valued for the purity of their genetics ie their genotype as well as their phenotype. The pigs I can think of are all longstanding breeds whose genotypes are important.
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Well, the interesting thing about the Badger face is that it is not strictly a breed in its own right, rather a colour variation on the Welsh Mountain.
Badger markings crop up from time to time in almost all breeds, but in this case the badger marked animals have been selectively bred for their markings.
Some other breed Societies do have grading up policies - some cattle breeds do, although to be fair the only one I can think of off the top of my head is the MRI (Muesse Rhine Issel) can't spell it. A beefy dairy breed.
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Does it depend on if they are from a 'manufactured' breed, by which I mean one such as Suffolks, which were bred from Norfolk Horn and um...forget which other breed
Norfolk horn and a southdown.
In reality, almost all the breeds we know today have been manfactured by cross breeding. It explains why most of them have been around for about the same length of time. Stock breeding is a constant process of evolution. At least, it should be. You look at a suffolk from 80 years ago, and it looks nothing like the suffolks you see today.
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Does it depend on if they are from a 'manufactured' breed, by which I mean one such as Suffolks, which were bred from Norfolk Horn and um...forget which other breed
Norfolk horn and a southdown.
In reality, almost all the breeds we know today have been manfactured by cross breeding. It explains why most of them have been around for about the same length of time. Stock breeding is a constant process of evolution. At least, it should be. You look at a suffolk from 80 years ago, and it looks nothing like the suffolks you see today.
The modern commercial breeds yes, but I would say that the older breeds such as the primitives (except Castlemilk moorit) have been produced by selection rather than crossing.
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Hi Cheryl :wave:if it's anything to go by, I bought some rare breed Soay sheep last year from a friend whose ancestors kept rare breeds way before the RBST existed. They are unregistered and are about to lamb this week or next - exciting yes, but I do wish they were registered, its a regret. Soays are lovely by the way and you don't need to shear them (it falls off in clumps) and they do all the lambing bit by themselves (alegedly - about to find out). Buy registered if you can, its worth the extra and means you've got the best really.
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Does it depend on if they are from a 'manufactured' breed, by which I mean one such as Suffolks, which were bred from Norfolk Horn and um...forget which other breed
Norfolk horn and a southdown.
In reality, almost all the breeds we know today have been manfactured by cross breeding. It explains why most of them have been around for about the same length of time. Stock breeding is a constant process of evolution. At least, it should be. You look at a suffolk from 80 years ago, and it looks nothing like the suffolks you see today.
The modern commercial breeds yes, but I would say that the older breeds such as the primitives (except Castlemilk moorit) have been produced by selection rather than crossing.
I agree where the primitives are concerned - their development has been a more evolutionary process. The other native breeds mostly been developed by crossing other older breeds, many of which are no longer with us.
There is some very interesting stuff to be found in this: A History of British Livestock Husbandry, to 1700
By Robert Trow-Smith. Extracts can be found online at http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=EYXc4ADJ0sgC&pg=PA18&dq=sheep+breeds+history&hl=en&ei=ENyVTb_gFcyIhQekvcCNBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=sheep%20breeds%20history&f=false (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=EYXc4ADJ0sgC&pg=PA18&dq=sheep+breeds+history&hl=en&ei=ENyVTb_gFcyIhQekvcCNBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=sheep%20breeds%20history&f=false)