The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: Rosemary on July 06, 2009, 09:31:19 pm
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What would be a reasonable number of ewes for my ram lamb to cover this year? He's well grown - born late March and a single but I don't want to stunt his development!
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we had a lamb Shetland ram running with 8 females 5 Shetland and 3 Cheviot's. he took his time but he covered all the Shetlands and one cheviot we think he had difficulty with the size difference. but if you want them close together borrow someones more mature ram.
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What breed of ram lamb??
???
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we have a policy of only using a ram lamb to follow the main tupping so he just gets the chance of a few (hopefully) often called a chaser round here. we use two tups for 60 ewes and would only use the lamb when he was bought in to replace an older one say every 3rd year. most times we will buy a shearling anyway
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Coloured Ryeland.
Hexhammeasure, so would your advice be not to use him?
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you can use him just not on too many ewes 10-15 would be the maximum, at least for our suffolk lambs. I would also advise putting young rams on old ewes and old rams on young ewes
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We put a ram lamb with 4 ewes last year two young and two old. He managed to make one old and one ewe in lamb.Ryelands.
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Maybe have to rethink this. Depends how important it is that they get in lamb, I suppose, and how quickly. I think Carol was quite keen to lamb earlier next year, so maybe he's not the best bet.
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I used a year old ram on 6 pedigree texels. He was quite small compared with ewes. Good results, all twins apart from one. But would not do the same on larger numbers.
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If you are going to use a ram lamb, give him ten at the most and tup them indoors so he hasn't got to do a lot of running about which will make him lose weight. Leave him in for one cycle only (17 days).
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Indoors insn't an option, but we can probably give him an enclosed space, to save his legs! And energy!