The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: perkhar on July 30, 2016, 12:20:26 am
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I have texel cross cheviot ewe hogs ready for the ram this season but wondering what ram to put to them. I am selling the male lambs if any which I'm sure there will be at auction and planning on keeping back the females for stock....
I want an animal that will achieve good results at sales but also want to make sure they are hardy enough to withstand our Hebridean winters and grazing...
I'm open to opinions which I'm sure there will be many. As I'm truly undecided on what ram to buy. Any suggestions and why would be really helpful in my decision making process
Thanks in advanced
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Texels are very hardy. If you can get one that's not too huge across the shoulders and buttocks for your young ladies. And has good feet.
Alternatively, a really shapey Shetland tup would give you super breeding girls, and the males would still be appealing at the mart.
You might have a job sourcing as they're now so rare, but the traditional tup for Cheviots was the Border Leicester, or 'Bred'. Known as 'the great improver', they tell me. The Doulton Flock is the flock I know. Wonderful strong animals, and fabulous fleeces.
Or a Downs breed. People seem to rate the Southdown, and the Hampshire Down, as terminal sires, and as fathers of breeding females.
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Thanks for the response I think these border Leicesters are fantastic looking animals very shapley and good stocky animals. As you say they are rarer to see i can't say I know anyone running them up here I know a few people having blue faced Leicester tups to cross on to a black face ewe to get their desired mules for breeding stock, then crossing them back to a continental.
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As a Southdown breeder I am, of course, biased, but any of the Down breeds will add a good carcase to the mix and less lambing problems than a Texel. There are Southdown breeders in Scotland (sold some ewe lambs up there myself) but try to avoid those with French or NZ bloodlines. The traditional Southdown is tougher and less leggy.
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Understandably marches farmer :)
I understand where your coming from with difficulty lambing the texel. I have family that breed texels pure and they have them inside our sheds at lambing time. Big chunky singles are produced but require a fair whack of assistance. Sheep are stunning though. Great carcass conformation. But I do worry about having to put so much time in to them at lambing.
Hence I have gone for a cross bred ewe to add a little hybrid vigour.... But chosing a ram is more difficult than I thought it would be.... Let's face it there's a lot to chose from
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I'm sure Ellie Stokeld would be happy to arrange shipment of one of her Border Leicester tups or tup lambs ;)
The BFL cross would also work, I'm sure - but the tup himself would be less hardy.
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I wonder how a animal from Yorkshire would get on up here in the uists. Some animals struggle with the harsh winters I do like them though....
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here we are.....
http://www.borderleicesters.co.uk/members.php?County=&Surname=&FlockNumber=&Prefix=&TP=27&PN=1 (http://www.borderleicesters.co.uk/members.php?County=&Surname=&FlockNumber=&Prefix=&TP=27&PN=1)
http://www.nc-cheviot.co.uk/flocks-and-members/ (http://www.nc-cheviot.co.uk/flocks-and-members/)
I hope you can find a breeder to suit :thumbsup: and do let us know how you get on?
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I will email a few to find out a little more about them.. What kind of grazing they are on and supplements ect.... Also does anyone use a cross bred sire???
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BORDERS are enormous sheep, don't like rough weather , which need good grass and plenty of feed , up until the 70;s they were the dominant sire for producing ewes eg Scottish /welsh / English halfbreds and the greyface all good sheep but very big and greedy . Used to be many ram flocks but now seems to be a niche breed for showing with size of ears , nose shape and wool the main attributes (USED to be tighter fleeced ) Really wouldn't like to try lambing hoggs to them . Texel on hoggs ( are we talking hoggs or gimmers / shearlings ? ) not good either and the ewe lambs at 3/4 texel would be as bad as pures . It pains me to suggest LLYEN easy to lamb , shapely lamb out of you xbreds and a nice female for future breeding
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BORDERS are enormous sheep, don't like rough weather , which need good grass and plenty of feed , up until the 70;s they were the dominant sire for producing ewes eg Scottish /welsh / English halfbreds and the greyface all good sheep but very big and greedy . Used to be many ram flocks but now seems to be a niche breed for showing with size of ears , nose shape and wool the main attributes (USED to be tighter fleeced ) Really wouldn't like to try lambing hoggs to them . Texel on hoggs ( are we talking hoggs or gimmers / shearlings ? ) not good either and the ewe lambs at 3/4 texel would be as bad as pures . It pains me to suggest LLYEN easy to lamb , shapely lamb out of you xbreds and a nice female for future breeding
Really? I never knew that. I was thinking of getting one for my Lleyn ewes last year to produce mules to go to mart. UI would also recommend Lleyn, there are some really good breeders in scotland, ireland however is the best to get the rams from thats where all the big breders get rams from. Choose a good breeder and the lambs are fantastic, as of yet my lambs are ready to go to slaughter off just grass no supplementary feeding at all, lambed april ready end of July, now thats progress!
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LLynn is a breed that's rare up here but I see it on this site a lot... They are also very nice looking rams.... My my hogs are now gimmers to be politically correct ready for the ram this year round for the first time..
How do you mean the 3/4 mix would be as bad as pures what are the main problems????
My male slaughter lambs won't be going to the mart till the following September the earliest possible sale here on the island...
Thanks for the replays so far really helpful hearing different ideas
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If you are set on putting 1 year olds (we would call them hoggs until their first shear), to the tup then I agree with Shep53 with a Lleyn tup. We use one on all our shearing Texel first timers (we don't lamb hoggs) and they lambs are nice and small and bullet shaped - pop out easily. However we only use him for the first year, after that we use a Texel tup to get better fat lambs - the Lleyn doesn't have the backside to get good quality meat lambs. SO you maybe want a cheap aged ram to use for the first year and then buy a more commercial breed (Texel / Suffolk) for the later years.
By the way - why did you go for NCC crosses, why not pure NCC's to a NCC tup??
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BORDERS are enormous sheep, don't like rough weather , which need good grass and plenty of feed , up until the 70;s they were the dominant sire for producing ewes eg Scottish /welsh / English halfbreds and the greyface all good sheep but very big and greedy . Used to be many ram flocks but now seems to be a niche breed for showing with size of ears , nose shape and wool the main attributes (USED to be tighter fleeced ) Really wouldn't like to try lambing hoggs to them .
Is one person's opinion ;)
If you're interested in the breed, you could ask appropriate breeders to put you in touch with folk in your region / type of terrain and climate who are using Border Leicesters.
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I bought them here locally at the mart last year as lambs and have wintered them and have had them sheared. They are in great condition and have decided to keep them for breeding stock... Id have liked to have gone down the route of ncc pure breeds but. These were available locally. There isn't a market that would pay any more for a pure bred animal over a cross on the island that would mean having to go away with them as far as Dingwall that's a ferry journey and a 4 hour drive away so, I didn't think I'd benefit. A cheviot tup might be the answer im not sure..
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Lleyn was going to be my next suggestion, though. Only downside with them is that the females will be far too prone to giving you triplets and quads. We had some Lleyns, liked everything about them, and their female offspring, except that.
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Pure cheviot lambs are born small, so a cheviot tup may be a very good choice. The 3/4 lambs would quite likely not be fat by September, though, but would probably sell well as stores.
Cheviot store lambs fetch an arm and a leg in August/Sept down here. They're still wee little bunny rabbits at that stage, and often fetch as much as or even more than finished fat lambs, selling in the ring next door! But they winter well, need no cake as long as there's good forage, and are superb fat hoggs come New Year / late winter.
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People do use crossbred tups, yes, but the best ones are purpose bred by reputable breeders, who'll either have tested them as lambs and/or will have sufficient experience of breeding them to have produced the right combination of genes. Just getting a cross tup lamb from your neighbour, you wouldn't know which characteristics he'd be likely to pass on.
Crosses I've seen bred as terminal sites include Beltex X Charollais - a great combination; and SufTex, of which I've frankly never really understood the point.
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With Lleyns their typical features eg triplets/quads etc are in certain lines only. There is a great variation within the breed. This year we had lots of triplets, and two sets of quads, but the quads were a Texel!! and a Mule! Lleyns had a few triplets bit mainly twins. Its easy to stereotype sheep and be very wrong!
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With Lleyns their typical features eg triplets/quads etc are in certain lines only. There is a great variation within the breed. This year we had lots of triplets, and two sets of quads, but the quads were a Texel!! and a Mule! Lleyns had a few triplets bit mainly twins. Its easy to stereotype sheep and be very wrong!
Lol, both guilty!
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I think I'd find getting a LLeyn here difficult unless I went far afield to get one.... I know of a few people breeding good Cheviots. from what I can gather most of you are saying to go with a recognised pedigree tup that has been bred for certain attributes. Is this to say that people with a good lamb ram non registered!!! Might not pass down any of its attributes to his lambs. There's obviously a major price difference between the two... Not that it isn't worth it if it was the right animal..... I'm just wondering if I'd benefit from a pedigree with my x commercial flock??? What are your thoughts????
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Just thinking aloud, you can't be the only person around your way to have this 'problem'. So, without reinventing the wheel, what is everybody else doing that works?
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Lots of people choose a tup lamb in the fat ring, use him and sent him off fat. Practically zero cost, and usually does a perfectly good job as a terminal sire.
We usually buy pedigree or specifically bred-for-breeding tups, as we breed our own replacement ewes and aim to have 80% of our fat lambs be in the top quartile of price/conformation.
We bought an aged pedigree Charollais tup for £450; he'd cost £2,200 as a shearling. His owner, a prizewinning breeder of pedigree Charollais tups himself, was selling this tup now as he'd now used him as many times as he could, and now had too many of his daughters in the flock to be able to use him again. As his genes got into our breeding ewes, our average conformation scores lifted a whole point, which makes 5p/kilo deadweight difference. 300 lambs x 20kg x 5p = £300 per annum increased revenue - forever (provided we don't do something silly, of course.)
So it depends on what you're wanting to achieve. Because you're creating your foundation flock, I'd be inclined to get the best tup you can. But buying an aged tup is usually a good way to get great genes for a fraction of the cost of a tup lamb or shearling.
Once you have your breeding flock established, you could do the buy a fat tup lamb thing, and only pay more money for a more predictable tup when you need some replacement ewes.
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Yeh my main concern right now is the ewe lambs left behind as I want to keep them back for stock... I have a wee while before I need the ram for this season but just trying to be prepared and as well informed as I can be.
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I may have sourced a pedigree ncc breeder in Lewis the island nearest us they have kept back ram lambs this year but have had them out at grazing since May and haven't brought them in for shearing yet, he said they were looking good before May but will let me know when they gather them in.... Might be an option???