You don't need to tease. If you prepare your girls well and tup at a natural time of year for them, you should get 98% to hold to the first service within the first 17 days.
I know whereof I speak, that's what I routinely achieved with 530+ ewes on a hill farm.
Anyone who doesn't lamb in the first 34 days has had a problem and wouldn't have held to a first service anyway. So in my not-very-humble opinion, teasing is, in your situation, pointless.
Unless you can only get a tup for 17 days, I suppose. Then, if you can borrow a tup or a teaser to run next door to the girls, you'd have them all cycling ready for the hired-in guy.
I'm sure Tim covers preparing the girls well in his book, but the basics are to have them fit but not fat, and if you want multiple births, on a 'rising plane of nutrition' (more in a mo.) For an April lambing you'll be tupping in November, so there won't be worms to worry about but if you're in a fluke area then make sure they're fluked before tupping and every 6 weeks (get the exact repeat dates from the meds you use) till spring. Give them a good chelated mineral drench either before (if you want multiple births) or immediately after (to ensure maximum implantation and early foetal development.) Some people put energy buckets out for them while they're getting tupped.
On a rising plane of nutrition means their intake is increasing, either in quantity or quality or both. Two months before tupping, find any which are really thin - condition less than 2 - and give them 1/2lb cake per day for a couple of weeks. They should fitten a little - it'll take a month to have any significant effect but you should see an improvement after two weeks. Any ewes who are condition 3 two months before are too fit; put them on your poorest ground and try to pull them back to 2.5 or less before tupping.
At two weeks before tupping you ideally want all of them at just under 2.5, so you can give them your best grass, or a bit of cake, or energy buckets to put them on that rising plane of nutrition. A good chelated mineral drench will also contribute.
Don't forget that the tup needs to be even fitter than the ewes. It takes 6 weeks to produce sperm, so in the case of a hired tup you are very much in the hands of whoever ran him before you did. If they didn't keep him well-fed while he worked, and/or had him covering too many ewes and/or too large an area, he could be run down and subfertile when he comes to you. All you can do is make sure he gets (or has been given) a chelated mineral drench and fluking if appropriate, and then feed him well while he is working for you. A tup with 50 ewes would need a good couple of pounds of cake a day - some of them work so hard they don't stop to graze!
You don't have the sort of numbers that would strain him, but I'd still give him at least a pound of cake a day.
You want to cull ewes who shouldn't lamb again - missing teeth, bad bags. You could cull or draft ewes who shouldn't lamb
for you again - drafting is selling as breeding ewes ("fully correct" - ie, good teeth, good bags) to someone who has easier ground than you. Hill flocks often draft at 2- or 3-crop; she'll go on and do well on a lowland farm, having maybe another 3 or even 4 crops down there, but after another crop on the hill she'd be ready to cull. Some lowland farms buy in all their breeding ewes this way.
If you are hiring a tup it may worth considering vaccinating your ewes against certain conditons that could be brought in with the tup. Talk to your vet about the recommendations for your area.
Topic: Planning for tupping....some Newby Q's (Read 4134 times)
