[Timothy5]

Thanks Tim W for all your help and advice, I shall wait to hear from your friend.

I did hear that there was a flock in North Essex, but I cannot find any details or contact for them.

I always tend to view claims that sound too good to be true with suspicion, perhaps it depends more
upon strain than breed in respect of disease and parasite resistance.

Aside from the bad points, they do seem ideal for me, particularly if I can get an improvement in
conformation. I am very pleased with my Wiltshire / Soays crosses in that respect.

[Cheekierdiagram]

Just wonder if a white dorper cross might breed a truer shaped Bbb than the Wiltshire horn would

[Tim W]

Just wonder if a white dorper cross might breed a truer shaped Bbb than the Wiltshire horn would

Having tried it I think the Wilts is a better bet

[Timothy5]

My thinking is that by using my cross bred ewes with a BBB ram, I can avoid such problems as unseasonal breeding, however keen the ram may be, the ewes come into season when it suits them.
 
Similarly, this should also serve to reduce litter numbers to a manageable level.

Breeding for conformation is something I will have to watch closely, being prepared to cull rigorously anything that fails to meet my standards.

Feet would be a matter of routine, but I will pay special attention to this.

[SallyintNorth]

My thinking is that by using my cross bred ewes with a BBB ram, I can avoid such problems as unseasonal breeding, however keen the ram may be, the ewes come into season when it suits them.

This only works for two years.  Once you have retained ewe lambs coming into the flock, the unseasonal breeding is a female trait too.  (Ask me how I know - we used Charollais tups for four or five years, keeping the best ewe lambs on, and now have ewes that come a-tupping a good couple of months earlier than our flock used to. )

[Timothy5]

Thanks, Sally, Point taken and duly noted.

I have little doubt that there are many more things that will come to light in time,
but I won't discover them unless I give it my best effort. Nothing teaches quite like
experience.

[SallyintNorth]

Thanks, Sally, Point taken and duly noted.

I have little doubt that there are many more things that will come to light in time,
but I won't discover them unless I give it my best effort. Nothing teaches quite like
experience.

Absolutely - even if you do something one of us has already done, you'll get different outcomes because they're not the exact same sheep on the exact same ground fed the exact same way in the exact same conditions. 

What is it they say?  Most of us learn from our own mistakes, a wise man learns from others' mistakes, a fool doesn't learn from his own.  Something like that, anyway.

[Timothy5]

That is precisely the reason why I started this thread.

At the time I did not know that Tim W was on here, but I had already heard about the work he has been involved in, and the production of the Exlana sheep breed.

That's what is so good about this group, we can dip into a very large pool of knowledge and experience.

[steve_pr]

As far as coloured genetics are concerned the Coloured Ryeland Flock Book have done a lot of detailed research with Cardiff (or it may have been Swansea) university on this subject (since the colured gene is recessive in Ryelands and two whites can throw a coloured lamb).


Equally the Rare Breed Society has a vested interest in a lot of this due to their work in promoting genetic diversity and managing very limited gene pools  (think Castlemilk Moorits for example).


I am also pretty certain that in most pedigree breeds you will find some very interesting genetics with what I term the "super sires" appearing time and time again in the blood lines so that even when the breed is not especially endangered, the actual genetic diversity is nowhere near as wide as you might imagine.  Maintaining a set of breed characteristics takes a lot of work and has largely been done in the past by "experience" rather than science.  Lots of "line breeding" to fix the characteristics you want (line breeding is the name when it works, "in breeding" is the description when it doesn't!!!)


Get prepared for some pretty heavyweight genetics stuff however.


Steve