[Remy]

Before last year I have always used a purebred tup (Ryeland, Zwartbles, Gotland) on my ewes - some are purebred (Charollais, Zwartbles, Gotland, Herdwick) and the rest are mainly crossbred ewes.  The resulting lambs have always been of a specific type.


A little story!  Last year I got a Meatlinc x (think the cross was a Beulah speckle face x or a mule x).  Anyway he was a superb stamp of a ram lamb (weighed 50kgs at 4 months old!) and caught my eye, which is why I bought him, as well as wanting to bring some new blood in and breed away a bit from the Ryeland type with my commercial cross ewes.  After having him a week he got in with the ewes, and when we parted them he threw himself at a fence post and broke his upper foreleg just below the elbow joint. I was gutted and resigned myself to losing him  .  [size=78%]I had various bits of advice from people which included having him pts, bandaging and splinting, when his breeder said it had happened to one or two of theirs and if I leave him alone in a paddock and keep him quiet, he may come right after a while.  I called the vet to get his opinion and he splinted the leg and said prognosis was probably poor, then after a week I found the splint broken in two and rubbing his leg so took it off and left him in a small paddock.  Incredibly after two months you would not even know he had broken it - he was sound, the leg was straight, no sign of a wound - it was amazing.[/size]


He was such a mature looking ram lamb, that winter I put him in with 12 ewes (non commercial) just to see how he fared.  These included Gotlands, Zwartbles and a Herdwick, along with a couple of small crossbred ewe lambs which I didn't think would take.  He got every single ewe except one crossbred in lamb, most were twins.


Just before shearing time I noticed he had a bit of a swollen eye, which must have been the result of some head banging with my Ryeland tup.  He seemed ok though and I kept an eye on him.  Then the day after shearing, I found him dead in the field, with blood on his head - he must have had another session with the Ryeland and caught wrong compounding his original injury.  I was pretty devastated after all he had come through! 


Anyway, the reason for this story is that I was so impressed with his progeny - they all had exactly the same stamp depending on the breed of the ewe (it was as if he had been purebred) - that I have got myself another couple of crossbred ram lambs - one is a Texel x Lleyn and the other is Texel x Suffolk, both again good looking strong tups.  I've seen both mother and father.


I just wondered if anyone used crossbreds rams and your experiences with them?

[SallyintNorth]

Top commercial breeders use - and sell - certain crosses, such as SufTex (Suffolk x Texel), Beltex x Charollais, and frequently Texel and Dutch Texel crosses with 1/2, 1/4 and 1/8 Beltex or other Texel-type.

They'll do it a little more scientifically than you or I can manage, of course .

I've used a tup lamb I bred here, and have kept some of his progeny on.  He was half Shetland and half <commercial mongrel> - his mum was a  Charollais out of a Beltex x Swaley Mule.

Two of his ewe lambs out of Dutch Texel commercial shearlings are excellent and are staying on as commercial ewes.  The DT cross male lambs all did well and were sold deadweight before Christmas, so finished nearly as fast and as well as any.

His progeny from my 'fleece sheep' were more varied, and at first I thought too varied.  But I've got some lovely fleeces and all the males have shaped up well, given their breeding (Mums are Shetland crosses and Manxes) and would have sold well enough in the ring had I wanted to sell them that way.  One went off fat late winter (his fleece wasn't special enough to warrant keeping him longer, and I wanted some hogget in the freezer before lambing) and was a very acceptable carcase for that sort of sheep.

He only gave me one ewe lamb from the primitives, and she'll not be bred from, she has an eye problem. 

This year I've used a pure Shetland, just on my fleece sheep, and I am absolutely delighted with his offspring.  There's not a lamb I'm not pleased with, except maybe the runt of one of the two sets of triplets.  The problem he's given me is how to select who's staying when it comes to this time next year and I will want to keep all his daughters on!

So, on limited data, my own view is that you get a more predictable - and if you chose well, excellent - outcome from a purebred tup.  But since we keep our own sheep for enjoyment as much as for a lamb crop, if you fancy trying these two, well - why not?  The SufTex is not an unusual choice for a terminal sire, and if you are wanting some replacement ewes, then the Texel x Lleyn could give you some interesting girls. 

Do let us know how they do!

[Marches Farmer]

Isn't this just a variation of the sheep stratification system that's been used in the UK for centuries?  Some of the rams have been given a new label and everyone claps their hands.

[SallyintNorth]

I don't think it is, MF, no.

As I understand the stratification, the tups used at each level are pure breds.

Originally it went something like this:

Hill & moorland : breed hill ewes, pure for replacements and sale to other hill farms
  Sell draft ewes at 2, 3 and 4 crop to upland farms
 
Upland : Buy draft hill ewes & gimmers
  Put to Blue-faced Leicester or Border Leicester (or Wensleydale or Teeswater) tup for Mule, Masham or Half-bred ewe lambs
  Sell Mule ewe lambs to lowland farms

Lowland : Buy mule gimmers, put to terminal sire (Suffolk, Texel, etc) for meat lambs

Some farms would do a bit of two or even three - for instance, on the moorland farm we bred our own Swales, put the older girls to the BFL for a Mule crop, kept a small flock of Mules ourselves, which were mostly kept 'in-bye' on less challenging ground, and were put to Texel and Beltex tups for a fat lamb crop.

[SallyintNorth]

These days, the Texel x Mule gimmer is another crop, being sold from SDA-type land to better farms, as ewes which will produce a slightly better fat lamb than the first-cross Mule.

[Marches Farmer]

Yes, but the basic principle is that you pick 'n' mix from sheep breeds to give you the optimum sheep for your land, your weather, your system and what you want to produce.

[SallyintNorth]

Yes, but the basic principle is that you pick 'n' mix from sheep breeds to give you the optimum sheep for your land, your weather, your system and what you want to produce.

Totally, but it's generally the ewes which are crossbreeds and mongrels, not the tups - and there's a good reason for that

[Porterlauren]

Suftex's account for 50% of all terminal sires used in NZ.

Also important to note that you can stabilise a cross breed.

[Marches Farmer]

I personally am not keen on the overall concept as it generally involves grandmother-to-grandson or similar matings, which I wouldn't want to use in my own flock.  There's still a lot find out about genetics - I had a long chat with a geneticist at the Royal Three Counties (she was judging pigs, so that's mainly what we discussed) and she convinced me that the wider the genetic base for a breed the better it was for its long-term survival. 

[SallyintNorth]

Pigs is a special case, I never got my head around it but it does seem to rely on 'line breeding' to a very large degree.

I don't think you'll find a great deal of line breeding in sheep.  Very occasionally, daughters and/or granddaughters may get bred back to an exceptional tup, but it's the exception not the rule - in commercial breeds, anyway.  (Rare breeds have their own issues and have to manage with what bloodlines remain.)

[Hellybee]

If it goes right its line breeding if it goes wrong it's inbreeding...so the phrase goes.


Happens a lot in the horse world too.   I dont see a problem long as its done with plenty of outcross blood, a keen knowledge of the bloodlines.     Only done to consolidate certain traits off certain animals. Exceptional stock getters both male and female need only apply.

[Marches Farmer]

Who knows what valuable genetic traits were lost from the culling that went on during the scrapie scheme ...?

[Remy]

I'm of the opinion that a wider gene pool is preferable, so will be careful not to be doing any close breeding unless by accident!  I will assess how the lambs turn out from these two, so long as I have a fair number of similar commercial types for market.  I find it quite interesting to experiment with a few each year!


I've had some really interesting crosses from my Herdwick, and my Zwartbles ewes have produced some lovely lambs from the Meatlinc x. 


So should the TexelxSuffolk produce the better market lamb?

[beagh-suffolks]

i have mostly texel crossed ewes and use a pedigree suffolk ram on them...people would buy ram lambs for breeding use straight from our yard, i have heard great reports about them from the people buying them, leaving a quicker growing, well built lambs

[Old Shep]

We have used Sufftex tups on mules and texel (ish) ewes with good results.  We are however leaning more now towards more pure bred tups, just because its easier to get your head around! They will be texels generally to get more white faces for market.  However both sufftex and texel x lleyn are nice cro[size=78%]ssbreeeds.[/size]