The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: zbd on August 05, 2015, 07:46:37 pm
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Hi all
I have been thinking of buying a herd wick tup to X with my texel ewes, has any else had a go at this?
What are Herdwicks like to keep? I have heard that they are hardy but like to escape and they ta, etc a while to finish properly.
Any advice would be helpful
Cheers
Ben
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The first and obvious questions is. . . . . . WHY?
I may be missing some obvious logic, but why cross a slow growing, awkward to handle, poor in shape, native hill breed tup over texel ewes?
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Sometimes crossing a hill breed with a lowand breed work out as a good all rounder lamb.
I have known of Shetland X with texel that produce a good lamb.
I am just looking for keeping something a bit different that is my main reason I guess!
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I take it that you don't like herdwicks then ! Lol!
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I have no huge issue against the Herdwick, I actually quite like them. I was genuinely wondering about your reasoning.
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Sometimes crossing a hill breed with a lowand breed work out as a good all rounder lamb.
I have known of Shetland X with texel that produce a good lamb.
I am just looking for keeping something a bit different that is my main reason I guess!
Usually this is done the other way round, with hill ewes like shetlands being good mothers on little input, with larger pelvises that can allow them to pass lambs relatively easily, a bigger breed such as a texel can be used to tip them for cross bred lambs that may be useful for meat or breeding.
Feeding great big texel ewes to produce smaller lambs is not likely to be as profitable I would have thought.
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I presume this is a wind up, :thinking: as anyone who keeps Texels would know better than to devalue the offspring by using a Herdwick ram. :dunce:
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Thanks!
That makes sense!
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One of my herdwick ladies decided she didn't like the look of our tup last year and instead took herself down the road to visit the local texel ::)
Her lamb was beautiful, and infact was just a larger, meatier herdwick in appearance. Can't comment on the meat quality as she isn't with us now. She'd lambed once before, and needed no assistance with the texel x
Herdwicks (in my experience) are NOT easy sheep to keep if you need to do anything with them. Obviously depends if you buy ones that have been left alone on the fells all their life, but they don't like being rounded up, hate being brought inside, will easily jump 5+ feet... Our ewes are always a lot harder work than the tups too, not sure why really.
That said, they dont ask a lot of you. Beside wormer, shearing, a zinc lick and heptavac, ours get nothing additional all year. Last winter (which wasn't too bad) 50+ girls ate less than three small bales of hay between the lot.
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It is becoming more common now to tup Texel and Beltex hoggs with a Shetland tup. It gives them an easy first lambing, active lambs that get up and find the milk bar on their own, the females are easily saleable to become commercial ewes and the males make reasonable fat lambs.
A Herdie tup would not achieve the same outcomes. Coarser wool on slightly larger lambs would mean harder births. Crossbred ewe lambs much less appealing as breeders; fat lambs not particularly good and slower-growing.