The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: morri2 on April 05, 2011, 11:30:48 am
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I was not sure whether to put this in 'Sheep', 'Marketplace' or here, so I thought I place it here as my query is neither one nor the other. This year, due to the problem getting a Bowmont ram, I've put my Bowmont ewes to one of my Polled Dorset rams. My dilemma here is that I don't know whether to ring the ram lambs or to leave them intact. If they were just Bowmont I'd probably leave them intact due to the shortage of rams, but not sure what to do with these crosses. They are best as wool sheep, and my first two lambs have beautiful fleeces so what should I do? Should I leave them intact in case someone might want to breed some Bowmont into their flocks to improve fleece quality, or should I ring them and market them as wethers for their fleece....HELP!!!!
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It would be worth keeping the very best one intact just in case, or you could even use him yourself next year. Fleece wethers are difficult to sell, but advertising them to BCSBA members could be a good option (the tup too) - not all stock has to be coloured
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I would ring the crosses, and try to get a pure male this year for breeding to the Bowmont girls. It would be quite difficult to tell how much Bowmont and how much Dorset he would pass on. If you get in touch with the Lady near Jedburgh (I keep forgetting her name) I am sure she will keep you one or two.
I had the same problem with the Shetland crosses, but decided that it would be too diffiuclt to sell a cross tup at a profit (as opposed to what I got for light lambs last year). As I do not have enough fields to separate the boys from the girls early on I ring all my boys, except for maybe one or two pure Shetlands (and so far these have never turned out to grow as well as I had hoped, and had to go into the freezer anyway...)
I have however kept one of the Bowmont/Shetland cross wethers on just to shear his first year fleece and see what's it like....
Good to hear that the girls are having lambs! My first few Shetlands are due later this week.