[Mel]

Hi all,
I wonder if someone could educate me on the method of early lambing,there seems to be several pictures of jan 2019 lambs appearing,but would this not mean they were consummated in Aug/sept
I have no interest in doing it just curiosity of how it’s done
Tia

[twizzel]

Some breeds cycle a bit earlier than others; Dorsets will lamb in September out of season to everything else. Other farmers will use vasectomise teaser rams to get the ewes cycling earlier, some use hormone implants or sponges. Others just turn the rams out, which then tease the ewes and bring them cycling- google ram effect.

[Buttermilk]

My ewes are lambing now.  I have a teaser ram who went in with the females when I sold my previous ram last summer and moved witht the ewe lambs when the new ram arrived and went in after he had done his quarantine in August. 

The breed I keep have their main ram sales in August and lambs for showing want to be January born otherwise they are at a disadvantage for their first year showing.

[ZacB]

We have Hampshire Downs & lambed in mid December - ram goes in in July, just the way it is.......

[PK]

It would be interesting to know more as to what extent the potential for early lambing is breed specific and to what extent it can result from manipulating the process. Wiltshire Horns (which I have) for example, are often stated to only come into season once a year and only in the autumn, although I’ve not put that to the test myself.

[harmony]

I'm sure it would be possible to manipulate the process for any breed of sheep but it is driven by the reasons Buttermilk says and to have ready early Spring lambs for the market so that rather  dictates the types of sheep "manipulated".

[SallyintNorth]

Ex-BH, on his hill farm in north Cumbria, used to leave a tup running with one batch of ewes year round, just to see when the earliest lambs would appear.

The ewes were mainly Texel and Beltex crosses, with North of England Mules in their ancestry, and a handful of Lleyns.

Up until he got a Charollais tup, the earliest lambs were usually mid to late February.  Once he had a single lamb on Jan 4th, and once a ewe lambed on Jan 31st.

Once the Charollais blood started to be in the breeding ewes, however, the ewes would start to cycle much earlier, so he had to keep the tups separate from August onwards.

The tups were January born themselves - I don’t know if that made a difference.

My own flock, a mixture of mostly rare breed and primitive cross breeds, used to run with the Shetland tup year round on that same farm, and I never got lambs before late March.