The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: m3joeEm on October 01, 2017, 09:56:10 am
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Hi,
I have a charollais ram lamb he is just 6 months old and is 60 kg but has big testicles. Thinking of using him on 20 ewes (ewe lambs and hoggets). Does he sound too light to be mature for the job?
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The old adage is "It they're big enough, they're old enough."
He sounds plenty big enough.
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I prefer to use a ram lamb with experienced ewes so one half of the equation knows what it's doing, but my tups stay in for 19 days only.
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I would give him a small group of ewes that have lambed before rather than ewe lambs
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Have you met many teenage boys or girls that didn't know what they were doing? :innocent:
I change my ram every few years and always use him initially as a lamb. I've never had a problem and they've nearly always caught the ewes in their first cycle. If you raddle their chest you get a pretty good indication of whether they know what they're doing or not. And believe me - they normally do!
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Thanks for replies. I've heard the idea of keeping older rams with ewe lambs and younger rams with older ewes. Ewe lambs have a shorter less obvious heat that apparently ram lambs may miss but I used a ram lamb on hoggets and ewe lambs last year and thankfully I had success. I think I have decided that This year I will put the ram lamb in for the first cycle and maybe put in an older tup after about 17 days and hopefully that will reduce the risks of any misses :) hopefully the ram lamb will be big enough and able to til most of not all!
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I once hired a well grown Badger Face tup lamb and found at lambing he'd covered only the ewes - fortunately that year I used an old Southdown ram to mop up for a few days afterwards and he covered most of the BF hoggets.
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Could be due to the ewes being more sexually aggressive, they will monopolise a ram in mixed age groups. Another option is the ewe lambs were stimulated to cycle by the ram and then tupped later
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Quite likely on both counts but I want a short lambing period without the bother and expense of veterinary intervention.