Smallholders Insurance from Greenlands

Author Topic: Ram purchase  (Read 7476 times)

SallyintNorth

  • Joined Feb 2011
  • Cornwall
  • Rarely short of an opinion but I mean well
    • Trelay Cohousing Community
Re: Ram purchase
« Reply #15 on: July 30, 2016, 09:37:40 pm »
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.
Don't listen to the money men - they know the price of everything and the value of nothing

Live in a cohousing community with small farm for our own use.  Dairy cows (rearing their own calves for beef), pigs, sheep for meat and fleece, ducks and hens for eggs, veg and fruit growing

SallyintNorth

  • Joined Feb 2011
  • Cornwall
  • Rarely short of an opinion but I mean well
    • Trelay Cohousing Community
Re: Ram purchase
« Reply #16 on: July 30, 2016, 09:42:43 pm »
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.
Don't listen to the money men - they know the price of everything and the value of nothing

Live in a cohousing community with small farm for our own use.  Dairy cows (rearing their own calves for beef), pigs, sheep for meat and fleece, ducks and hens for eggs, veg and fruit growing

SallyintNorth

  • Joined Feb 2011
  • Cornwall
  • Rarely short of an opinion but I mean well
    • Trelay Cohousing Community
Re: Ram purchase
« Reply #17 on: July 30, 2016, 09:46:59 pm »
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.
Don't listen to the money men - they know the price of everything and the value of nothing

Live in a cohousing community with small farm for our own use.  Dairy cows (rearing their own calves for beef), pigs, sheep for meat and fleece, ducks and hens for eggs, veg and fruit growing

Old Shep

  • Joined Feb 2011
  • North Yorkshire
Re: Ram purchase
« Reply #18 on: July 30, 2016, 10:11:19 pm »
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!



Helen - (used to be just Shep).  Gordon Setters, Border Collies and chief lambing assistant to BigBennyShep.

SallyintNorth

  • Joined Feb 2011
  • Cornwall
  • Rarely short of an opinion but I mean well
    • Trelay Cohousing Community
Re: Ram purchase
« Reply #19 on: July 30, 2016, 10:20:14 pm »
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! 
Don't listen to the money men - they know the price of everything and the value of nothing

Live in a cohousing community with small farm for our own use.  Dairy cows (rearing their own calves for beef), pigs, sheep for meat and fleece, ducks and hens for eggs, veg and fruit growing

perkhar

  • Joined Sep 2015
Re: Ram purchase
« Reply #20 on: July 30, 2016, 11:35:22 pm »
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????

Womble

  • Joined Mar 2009
  • Stirlingshire, Central Scotland
Re: Ram purchase
« Reply #21 on: July 31, 2016, 12:13:44 am »
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?
"All fungi are edible. Some fungi are only edible once." -Terry Pratchett

SallyintNorth

  • Joined Feb 2011
  • Cornwall
  • Rarely short of an opinion but I mean well
    • Trelay Cohousing Community
Re: Ram purchase
« Reply #22 on: July 31, 2016, 12:24:07 pm »
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. 
Don't listen to the money men - they know the price of everything and the value of nothing

Live in a cohousing community with small farm for our own use.  Dairy cows (rearing their own calves for beef), pigs, sheep for meat and fleece, ducks and hens for eggs, veg and fruit growing

perkhar

  • Joined Sep 2015
Re: Ram purchase
« Reply #23 on: July 31, 2016, 07:02:42 pm »
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.


perkhar

  • Joined Sep 2015
Re: Ram purchase
« Reply #24 on: July 31, 2016, 10:04:36 pm »
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???

 

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