The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: darkbrowneggs on August 17, 2011, 11:35:33 pm
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Hi - Anyone know what the "easy care" possibilities would be in this cross, and is black dominant?
Many thanks
Sue
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I don't know Wiltshire Horns well enough to comment in detail but from the BWM's you should hopefully get easy lambing and good mothering. Given that I understand that Welsh Mountain Sheep were one of the primary elements in the development of the Wiltshire Horn the resultant cross should be hardy. Black is usually dominant. I am going to the BWM sale at Abergavenny on 1st September and if no one here can help any further then will happily ask around for you to see if anyone has any experience of the cross. Alternatively the BWMSBA secretary is very helpful.
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Thanks for that - I didn't think of approaching the BWM society. I was a member and kept a pedigree flock for many years, and found them excellent sheep to keep, but was hoping to go down the "easy care" route and wanting to bring in the good qualities I remember from my BWM - especially the taste ;D
Many thanks
Sue
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I admit to an obsession with the little black sheep. I fell for them when still a teenager but my late father was adamant that we wanted Dorset Downs and I had a very long wait before I was able to own any. The taste is definitely worth experiencing and I love their alertness and attitude.
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There's a huge flock of Wiltshire horns near us and the only thing about them that looks easy care is the fleece. Watching a fit young farmer wrestling with a ram thats 40kg heavier is a sight, especially given those magnificent curly horns. One owner told me that the good news was that they lambed outdoors, the bad news that they demolished the building if confined!
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I think Wiltshire Horns are supposed to have good feet, too.
I worked with a variety of ewes including Wiltshire Horn at lambing time on a rare breed farm park and they were no trouble indoors - but being on a farm park they were very used to people about, etc.
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Alternatively you could try crossing the blacks with an easy care ram - then you wouldn't get the problems with the horns as easy care females don't carry horns whereas the wiltshire females do.
The easy care does grow wool but sheds it naturally rather than having none at all.
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If you want them to shed their fleece then you need two generations to get that trait back.
I keep Wilts and the feller that sold me them is working on his own 'easy care' Wilts x Lleyn which sounds promising.
So you would have to cross your BWM to a Wilts ram and then the resulting progeny to another (Unrelated) Wilts ram. These would then have the shedding fleece. I imagine they would be somewhat smaller than a Wilts, you could then use a more prolific terminal sire, perhaps a Charollais.
The 'easycare' traits of Wilts are as follows: Shedding fleece, so no shearing and flystrike is rare (base of the horns is an often overlooked site for flies), Will lamb outdoors in most weathers, good feet, thrifty - will finish on grass, shouldn't need feeding when stocked sensibly (I work on 3/ac, and the landowner takes a hay crop off a third).
The down sides to Wilts are: Not very prolific (lamb at about 135%), incapable of rearing triplets (if you ever see them), Very rarely accept a foster lamb (which isn't that much of an issue with a breed where triplets are rare), difficult to confine and a bit of a git to handle (I don't mind this, but I am a 6 foot feller).
Most outcrossings are an attempt to increase lambing percentages and to make them a bit more placid.
I like em, but thats just me, I like terriers too. :P
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Pure bred Wiltshire don't have a fleece at all.
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They do - it grows in winter and sheds off in spring. The wiry 'hair' you see on em is from after shedding - which usually takes place mar/april. Ok, the fleece is not dense like a wooled sheep, but it is definitely there. I suppose you could be pedantic and call it all 'hair' but the winter coat is definitely thicker and softer than the summer one.
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Photo 1: Late summer, you can see the top fleece just starting to grow on the back of the neck of the ewe in the foreground.
(http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a314/Funky_Monks/DSCF0981.jpg)
Photo 2: Late february - a fully 'fleeced up' Wilts with lamb at foot (the lambs get much fleecier than their mothers in the first spring):
(http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a314/Funky_Monks/DSCF1117.jpg)
I wish I had a photo of the ewes in May/June to hand, they are even less 'fleecy' then.
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and a bit of a git to handle
I love this!
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Nice looking sheep Steve :)
What I was aiming for was a smaller black (possibly horned - not bothered either way) sheep, with the taste/texture of the BWM meat, but with easy care fleece. Hence my question about using a BWM sire and whether I would get mostly black lambs. Mind you I may be able to answer my own question in a few months.
I am hoping to get a BWM ram which is carrying a reasonably thin fleece, then..... would I select a thin fleeced black first cross ram lamb and breed back to original females, or will I need to get a Wiltshire Horn ram to go onto any black first cross females.
My knowledge of genetics is hazy, hence the questions.
So far I have found them an interesting breed to keep, but haven't had to handle them much yet.
I was told they are impossible to "drive" and they certainly split, but I have found if they know what I want them to do, they will comply, I use a thin high teeth whistle to signal to my sheep I expect them to move away from me and call them if I want them to come to me, and they picked that up within the first week. Mind you I haven't "done" anything to them yet, so we will have to see. ;D
Glad I have found a "Wiltshire Horn" expert on the site. ;D
All the best
Sue
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I agree with DBE, those are lovely sheep, Steve. Sounds like they think and behave like hill sheep! (Which are pretty much all gits and the terriers of the sheep world, ain't they?!)
What I was aiming for was a smaller black (possibly horned - not bothered either way) sheep, with the taste/texture of the BWM meat, but with easy care fleece. Hence my question about using a BWM sire and whether I would get mostly black lambs. Mind you I may be able to answer my own question in a few months.
I am hoping to get a BWM ram which is carrying a reasonably thin fleece, then..... would I select a thin fleeced black first cross ram lamb and breed back to original females, or will I need to get a Wiltshire Horn ram to go onto any black first cross females.
Reading what you were wanting to achieve made me wonder whether a Soay would be a better cross for you than the Wiltshire? Or one of the other primitives that shed their fleece - someone on here will know a heck of a lot more about that than me. :wave:
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Presumably all sheep shed their coats until selective breeding intervened?
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The only thing I'm not sure about is the black couloring, having never done it.
The way my 'mentor' (who keeps hundreds of Wilts Horns on Salisbury plain) went about his Lleyn cross was by putting a pure Wilts ram to Lleyn ewes and then a different pure Wilts to that first generation of ewes who will then produce shedding offspring. These can then be put to whatever terminal sire you like. I suppose you could but a BMW ram to wilts ewes and put that 1st gen back to a Wilts ram, if I remember my genetics. The 1st gen crosses will not shed, but their fleece does kind of 'come off' a bit I believe, but will still need shearing. Don't whatever you do, put a ram back to its mother (or I wouldn't anyway).
As I understand it, the gene for shedding is dominant (or so he said), the reason it takes two generations (my hypothesising here, not his) is that it must be coded for on two different genes. Anyone with a better grasp of genetics that me is welcome to correct me on this.
My grazing is over a number of paddocks with access roads running through the site. Being both too stingy to pay for fuel and something of a tradtionalist, I always walk mine when I change pasture. I go on ahead with the bucket and whoever my lucky volunteer is walks on behind. You have to be gentle when you are walking them - when I have driven mules there was handclapping and so on - clap your hands at Wilts and they will vanish into the sunset. On the rare occasions that I'm not 'bucket guy', I whistle softly and tell em gently to get on, only raising my voice when they don't.
They are hard to pen and will jump out of a square hurdle pen - sometime tying a hurdle across the top helps, but I can't bring myself to tie two over, enclosing them completely. I am treating a ewe for 'lumpy jaw' (no - I'd never heard of it either), which is a 5-day course of intramuscular antibiotics, and I keep coming back and she is out of her pen, so now I've put her in a bloody loose box. Funnily, those who had to be penned at lambing (and she was one - good mother but had a rare case of triplets, one of which I gave to the local community farm to bottle rear) didn't jump, maybe they were exhausted, maybe they didn't want to leave their lambs, who knows?
They are a bit like hill sheep, from what I hazily recall (my godfather had a hill flock in the lakes when I was a nipper) - except they are big.
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black colouring is either dominant black or recessive as I understand it most? BWM are dominant black and so first cross are likely to be black second generation rather depends on the genetics of the ram you use and whether you are bothered by the colour of offspring in which case continue to select for black
steve in hants is right if the genetics for shedding are dominant. i'm not sure whether its shedding thats being inherited or hair fleece then the second cross he proposes will fix the majority of the resultant lambs as homozygous for shedding.
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Aye, but as I understand it none of the F1 crosses shed properly. If it was on one set of genes, you'd get some that wholly did and some that wholly didn't (the homozygous recessives).
By F2, they all shed - so as far as I can work out, it must be coded for over at least two sets of genes.
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If this is the case you are talking of incomplete dominance or incomplete penetration seen also in horn genetics and yes if this is the case your first crosses won't shed properly. The genetics for non shedding have an influence on the shedding gene and so any that are heterozygous ( one gene that sheds and one that doesn't ) will have the shedding gene incompletely expressed.
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I was briefly tempted to drag my 1st year undergrad genetics textbook out as I am now genuinley interested in the genetics behind shedding (I know how it works, just not exactly why), but then I saw the size of the book..... :o
I wonder if anyone has access to athens here and can drag out a couple of papers, if any exist?
And also, in describing Wilts as 'gits' I hope I haven't shot myself in the foot when it comes to selling ewe lambs later in the year..... ;D
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http://jas.fass.org/content/early/2011/02/25/jas.2010-3713.abstract (http://jas.fass.org/content/early/2011/02/25/jas.2010-3713.abstract) a little more to the point. my own curiosity is more to do with rooing of wool and I am not certain that the genetics found in the wiltshire are the same as for the shetland.
Rooing a Shetland sheep (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8hp-rngcEA#)
if so would there not be a case for a wooly wiltshire that sheds? two products not one? my own breed ouessants will roo and I understand from shetland breeders that selection for sheep that roo pays dividends for producing lambs that roo but there are some peculiarities yearlings don't always roo well etc.
my understanding is it is temperature dependant but I haven't looked any further than that maybe a daylight hours thing as well.
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I don't know if there would be a case for a wooly shedding Wilts - the wool comes off in dribs and drabs anyway. To be honest, the appeal of the breed is how little you have to handle them, which excuses them being difficult to handle.
That abstract is pretty interesting and explains why some lambs appear to hang onto their wool much longer than others.
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;D I guess I should have read a little further than the first couple of lines :sheep: :sheep:
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Thanks for the suggestion Sally :)
So the question is ??? has anyone on here kept Soay and BWM and how do they (or for that matter another shedding breed) compare as regards being quiet and easy to handle, and what about flavour
I kept my BWM flock for about 20 odd years, and found them trouble free and easy to handle, easy lambers and good mums. All the rams were quiet and pleasant, and the meat was delicious - How do any of the other primitive breeds compare, preferably black ones ;D
Sue
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You know my feelings already. I have just been up to the Blacks and as usual they steamed up, the leader of the brat pack, Lily, who I showed this year, virtually climbed on the quad in her efforts to claim she hadn't seen me for weeks (actually I was last up there at 8 this morning), they are as you say easy to handle but still retain that spark. Nevern is the only ram I have had who effectively halter trained himself and he is a perfect gentleman except when he is pushing the other young males off the food. Having said that I do have five Shetlands from the Mandeville Flock who are extremely friendly and easy as well. Keeping them black would not be easy tho as black is not dominant if the sheep is carrying any lighter colours (if I understand the genetics of Shetlands correctly and I am in some doubt about this). And flighty Shetlands are like flighty Herdwicks - where did I put those binoculars? Jacobs will give you dark coloured sheep but although I am assured they taste great (never yet managed to bring myself to eat a Jacob) they are larger framed and I can't see either the size of joints being what you are looking for or the texture being equal to a BWM meat wise. Balwens don't seem to have the same degree of hardiness, although a friend of mine has just acquired 2 Balwen x Herdwick and apparently the result of that cross appears to be quite interesting. My only experience of Soay was to marvel at their jumping ability. Not sure what the point would be in looking at Badger Faced Torwens rather than BWM and we are well into improved rather than primitive breeds by now.