Belclare vs Lleyn

metalwood

Hi All

For a few years now I have been running Vendeen Tips and I know they are terminal sires but I have got to extract more profit out of the enterprise:D

My lambing average is 1.1 for a few years now and we are doing nothing different than before when texels were giving us 1.8 but changed to an easier lambing and hardier breed which they are.

The problems I see is that i keep all good ewe lambs for breeding and milkwise they are not great and not very prolific even PB hoggets are as bad as i run a few of these.

I have decided to change to either a Belclare or a Lleyn tip to try and introduce some maternal traits into the flock and to increase nos

I thought about selling all stock as i used to have suffolk/texel ewes but imo the vendeen has diluted the maternal traits right down to poor milkers. Mad Hogget prices has put this idea on hold for the min.

I have heard good reports about both but was looking for your opinions on these breeds

Thanks

metalwood

Any Opinions

5live

Often tempted to try the lleyn but have stuck to vendeen and belclare for last 10 years. The belclare is a more muscular sheep than the older belclare and more than the lleyn too i'd say from looking at them at the ploughing last year. They do however seen to providea more even number of twins rather than triplets and quads bt the belclare but thats just figures talking. I have yet to take the plunge so i cant give an opinion on experience

king_m

Hey Metalwood,

I have being running the same question around in my old noodle as well for the last few weeks. I have access to 2 no. Belclare ram lambs to use on my ewes but was thinking about the supposed ease of lambing traits coming from the lleyn as I am not a full time farmer. I have had a few belclare ewes down through the years and find them excellent for milk and number of off spring. Oh what to do, Cheaper to use existing Belclare rams or get a Lleyn ram and take the chance. So like you Metal wood which breed is the better for breeding the of the off spring again and ease of lambing???

metalwood

I had my heart set on a Belclare for a few weeks now.........but I was talking to a lad the other night and he had to phase them out as they throw too many triplets and quads which is a nightmare to handle

He changed to Lleyn and as 5 Live says gets more uniform nos of twins. I know i have to increase my average but dont want the headaches of huge numbers of Lambs
I bought a few Belclare ewes with lambs at foot last Feb and they did great all summer ewes have piles of milk........really good mothers.

I have to introduce more maternal traits into my ewe lambs as milk seems to be a big issue for me with a lot of creep later on

I have a few PB Vendeen ewes that are meal fed all the time or the milk drops off so something has to change

The mind races on

rancher

metalwood wrote: »

I had my heart set on a Belclare for a few weeks now.........but I was talking to a lad the other night and he had to phase them out as they throw too many triplets and quads which is a nightmare to handle

He changed to Lleyn and as 5 Live says gets more uniform nos of twins. I know i have to increase my average but dont want the headaches of huge numbers of Lambs
I bought a few Belclare ewes with lambs at foot last Feb and they did great all summer ewes have piles of milk........really good mothers.

I have to introduce more maternal traits into my ewe lambs as milk seems to be a big issue for me with a lot of creep later on

I have a few PB Vendeen ewes that are meal fed all the time or the milk drops off so something has to change

The mind races on

I have used lleyns and texels, crossed back and forth, for the last ten years, average about 1.75 lambs per ewe without too many triplets, good cross, hardiness of the lleyns with the conformation of the texel.
Also have a vendeen pedigree flock and always advise customers not to use for breeding replacement ewes for a commercial flock, great cross on texel cross lleyn ewes for factory and butchers lambs,

eorna

got a lleyn ram a couple of years ago for the same reason, this is the second crop of lambs i got from him, can't give you feed back in increased number of lambs as his ewe lambs only hoggets this year. There are two things i noticed though than can be helpful...the wether lambs from him are hard enough to fatten, they will fatten but are slower to grow and have to bring them to higher weights to get same dead weight, (i suppose is probably the same with any maternal breed). Now for the ease of lambing his lambs are spectacular when born, up and suckling in no time at all and very strong (maybe different rams have different traits), that's just my experience anyways....i use texels and charolais and they are good enough at lambing but when lleyns are born i know i don't even have to go back see how they are getting on..

rancher

eorna wrote: »

got a lleyn ram a couple of years ago for the same reason, this is the second crop of lambs i got from him, can't give you feed back in increased number of lambs as his ewe lambs only hoggets this year. There are two things i noticed though than can be helpful...the wether lambs from him are hard enough to fatten, they will fatten but are slower to grow and have to bring them to higher weights to get same dead weight, (i suppose is probably the same with any maternal breed). Now for the ease of lambing his lambs are spectacular when born, up and suckling in no time at all and very strong (maybe different rams have different traits), that's just my experience anyways....i use texels and charolais and they are good enough at lambing but when lleyns are born i know i don't even have to go back see how they are getting on..

I found the lleyn ram lambs hard to fatten too, they seem to mature at an earlier age, they are always chasing the ewe lambs ,I castrate them at birth and that improves them

jfh

we got a llyen ram late last year, to cover after charollais ram, one thing about the llyen, they're very active, got much more than the charollais in lamb.
the lambs were def a lot hardier than the charollais and not surprisingly a good bit slower to fatten, taller rangier sheep. also believe they're a late season lambing sheep.
sorry can't answer which to go for between a belclare, we were looking for a belclare at the time and this llyen came along. very nice looking hoggets though. much better feet than the charollais

metalwood

thanks for your inputs

I would not be too concerned about the fattening as my grazing quality would not be great although reseeding a field or two each year now.

I usually let the wethers lie over the winter and sell in Jan/Feb after housing them after coming off rape.

my biggest aim is to clear out the Vendeen ewes and introduce more maternal and prolific traits into the flock

Reading all the comments above is swaying me towards the Lleyn

tabby aspreme

I have been using lleyn rams for the last four years and keeping the ewe lambs and am very pleased with them , i agree with the points made in the above posts and add that they are easily fed over the winter with the ewes carrying twins walking away from the meal troughs before all the meal is eaten while the texel crosses are still wolfing it down.

The ramb lambs are hard to fatten alright, this year i have most of them sold as foward stores averageing 91 euro which im happy with as neither ewe nor lamb got meal since lambing, with a weaning average of 1.6 .

snowman707

when is the sale in Tullow? or is it over?

tabby aspreme

I think the sale is on the first Saturday in October , if your interested in a ram I look before then as in previous years there have been only 10 or12 rams on offer due to society rules that for each ram entered for sale 10 females have to be also entered . and only hogget rams or older can be sold , take a look at the Lleyn website it's quite good

jtex

I'm not sure why you changed from Texels. We're currently running 85 pb Tex ewes, this year we scanned 1.85% had no pets and have only had to section 1 ewe in the last 5 years.
If your keeping the females from the ewes whose lambs out preform the others at 6wks you'll have a gud idea which ewes keep the best milk. We operate this system in the pb flock and cull hard for poor milkers.
We're doing half the work with them than 10 years ago but you have to be willing to cull hard at the start, to see significant change.

rancher

jtex wrote: »

I'm not sure why you changed from Texels. We're currently running 85 pb Tex ewes, this year we scanned 1.85% had no pets and have only had to section 1 ewe in the last 5 years.
If your keeping the females from the ewes whose lambs out preform the others at 6wks you'll have a gud idea which ewes keep the best milk. We operate this system in the pb flock and cull hard for poor milkers.
We're doing half the work with them than 10 years ago but you have to be willing to cull hard at the start, to see significant change.

I find them slow to finish, even though my texel rams are high LMI,(160+) Texel ewes are slow to lamb(too posh to push), get too heavy, then die before you can cull them, even the texel society themselves are advocating crossing with a hill breed, ie hiltex, these problems have no place on a busy sheep farm. I use them for their milking ability and conformation

tabby aspreme

jtex wrote: »

I'm not sure why you changed from Texels. We're currently running 85 pb Tex ewes, this year we scanned 1.85% had no pets and have only had to section 1 ewe in the last 5 years.
If your keeping the females from the ewes whose lambs out preform the others at 6wks you'll have a gud idea which ewes keep the best milk. We operate this system in the pb flock and cull hard for poor milkers.
We're doing half the work with them than 10 years ago but you have to be willing to cull hard at the start, to see significant change.

I found the half texel ewe very good but did not like what I got when they were bred again with a texel , i would have no problem using a texel ram with a 1/2 or 3/4 Lleyn ewe .
I agree about culling hard and include anything with persistent foot trouble with the culls
As for choosing replacements, any twin ewe lamb that has not needed any help at birth is ear notched going out of the shed after lambing and the best of these are kept for breeding

jtex

tabby aspreme wrote: »

I found the half texel ewe very good but did not like what I got when they were bred again with a texel , i would have no problem using a texel ram with a 1/2 or 3/4 Lleyn ewe .
I agree about culling hard and include anything with persistent foot trouble with the culls
As for choosing replacements, any twin ewe lamb that has not needed any help at birth is ear notched going out of the shed after lambing and the best of these are kept for breeding

I've heard this of only keeping twin ewe lambs for replacements,we only keep females from the best breeding/preforming lines there are single ewes in the flock and they've always had twins and triplets. As for Texels being 2 posh to push we've seen ewes fire out lambs at 6-7kg unaided some of these first time lambers, and for life expectancy stock rams are 6years old with best breeding ewe 8yrs an will be served again in sept.

Don't trust LMI as one year we had culled the scrap and found they had the best LMI, the euro stars are similar they're based on back history more than the lambs individual performance bit of a red herring.

rancher

You asked 'why change'' and I've told you. The euro stars have proved themselves in the cattle and with sheep farmers cooperation will do so with sheep. If you had any experience of the LMI you would observe that better muscled sheep would have poorer growth rates, so when you cull on looks you're naturally culling the lesser muscled or faster growers. this is much more noticeable in cattle,ie a charolais will grow much faster than a belgian blue. All the other reasons are based on my own experiences and my vet calls them ''too posh to push'' and he should know.

jtex

rancher wrote: »

You asked 'why change'' and I've told you. The euro stars have proved themselves in the cattle and with sheep farmers cooperation will do so with sheep. If you had any experience of the LMI you would observe that better muscled sheep would have poorer growth rates, so when you cull on looks you're naturally culling the lesser muscled or faster growers. this is much more noticeable in cattle,ie a charolais will grow much faster than a belgian blue. All the other reasons are based on my own experiences and my vet calls them ''too posh to push'' and he should know.

I was in the LMI scheme for over a decade. The lambs we culled had poorer weaning weights, poorer scanning for back muscle (loin) and yes looked the lesser sheep. These were the 5 star sheep in the flock. It just doesnt add up from my experience. If I continued breeding 5 star rams I would have gone back years with the flock, that said i do believe 6wk lamb weights are key to selecting the top preforming ewes.

eorna

i changed from keeping texel X replacements, simply because i would like to get more lambs. if you think of it every 100 ewes if you wean at 1.4 or at 1.8 there is a difference of 40 lambs every 100 ewes..that's a big difference (4000 euro as in today prices). And that is why i think more people is changing to more maternal breeds such as lleyn or belclare. After that there is good or bad farmers, better or worse ground, there are more factors than just the breed..every breed has to be well managed but the potential is there to increase number of lambs from maternal breeds.

Username John

Hello,

Following this thread with interest... Currently only have Suffolk rams, but interested to know more about the Belclare.

Any one know how the Belclare sale in Kilkenny the start of this month went, or what prices were?
http://belclaresheep.com/sites/default/files/kilkenny2011.pdf

Username John

After some googling - I answered my own question

http://farmersforum.ie/data/marts/1312367383.pdf

Belclare Hogget Rams €390 to €740 per hd
Belclare Lamb Rams €400 to €1260 per hd
Belclare Hogget Ewes €250 to €320 per hd

razor8

you get great scanning results from the Belclare but not the required weaning results, most farmers have high losses with this breed at lambing time, you cant beat the Mule cross, shes a low maintainence sheep that puts the lambs before herself

Cran

[ you cant beat the Mule cross, shes a low maintainence sheep that puts the lambs before herself[/QUOTE]

agree super sheep, my next aim is to get a breed to cross with mules to keep the ewe lambs while keeping the positives & weaning numbers as much as I can while adding something else such as better conformation

razor8

Ive crossed my mules on a few breeds, from Suffolk to Charlaois and find you cant beat the texel to get a bit of shape into them. I split them last year and used a Suffolk on one half and a Texel on the other and the texels are on front so far. bought 2 suffolk ram lambs last year as i thought the suffolk ewe lambs would be worth more to sell. It really all depends on how good the ram is, i suppose. my father always said, a good ram of any breed is what you want

kboc

How do you pronouce them?

I know the penninsula in walse where they originated from is spelt Lleyn but pronouced something like "Klin"

sheeper

Hey Rancher just wondering how many ewes you are lambing ?

rancher

sheeper wrote: »

Hey Rancher just wondering how many ewes you are lambing ?

550

supersean1999

bought a lleyn ram lamb recently as an experiment,ill be interested so see what the cross is like out of a blackface ewe, my plan is to use the charolais on the cross, no reason she wont be a good hardy sheep

metalwood

I was at the Carlingford Sheep Breeders Sale last week and there were alot of Lleyn x ewe lambs on offer and tbh I wasn't impressed with the quality of them.

So more debating went on in my head and this morning I took the plunge and bought a Belclare Ram lamb so we will see how this experiment turns out

Cran

fair play metalwood, will have to keep us updated on how it works out... will see if I take the plunge with a lleyn later this month

What sort of money did the sheep in Carlingford make?

metalwood

Hoggets were making from €150 - €210
ewe lambs from €100 - €150
there was a big Lleyn hogget sold for €260 :eek:
It was a good day to be selling stock Was in Ardee mart this morning and good breeding stock was making nowhere near the above prices

Green farmer

Found this old thread. Any up to date thoughts from people on belclare v llyen , as looking for a ram to give me some replacements ?????

rangler1

Green farmer wrote: »

Found this old thread. Any up to date thoughts from people on belclare v llyen , as looking for a ram to give me some replacements ?????

Belclares respond very well to good management, a friend of mine has nearly all belclares and the mature ewes scanned 2.4/ewe this year. He could have over 100 pets on a 500 ewe flock.
It depends what you're looking for, my Lleyns wouldn't compare with that

Green farmer

I'm at 1.5 this year. I've a lot of daughters of texel rams in the flock. Need some thing to boost the maternal bloodlines and get me nearer the 2.0. I'm open minded about which one to use. I wouldn't mind some pet lambs, this year I fostered all but 2 on, but anymore and I'd be taking to donedeal quickly and gladly accepting €20 for each one. I've never had llyen cross ewes here. I've been told that their easily feed in the winter. Good conversion rates. Excellent mothers.
I've had a batch of belclares before. Found them easily lambed and milky. Also to be of quiet temperament.

rangler1

Green farmer wrote: »

I'm at 1.5 this year. I've a lot of daughters of texel rams in the flock. Need some thing to boost the maternal bloodlines and get me nearer the 2.0. I'm open minded about which one to use. I wouldn't mind some pet lambs, this year I fostered all but 2 on, but anymore and I'd be taking to donedeal quickly and gladly accepting €20 for each one. I've never had llyen cross ewes here. I've been told that their easily feed in the winter. Good conversion rates. Excellent mothers.
I've had a batch of belclares before. Found them easily lambed and milky. Also to be of quiet temperament.

Texels would be low prolificacy alright and either breed will remedy that, at the higher scanning rate you'll have less opportunity for fostering as there'll be less singles around.
Don't like selling pet lambs, some that I have sold have met a sad end, so I'll only sell to some body now that wants to put it on a ewe.
Lleyns are easy fed and eat very little....often wonder is the low intake the reason for the slow performance in my lambs....have tried every other theory

Green farmer

The lambs you put the pics up of the other day seem to be thriving well. Just goes to show there's no perfect breed. they seem fairly self sufficient ? , which is what you need , if you want to expand the flock to a good size.

Lano Lynn

i find it ammusing that the original belclare was the galway improver basically a finn galway then a little Lleyn was introduced to the mix.
subseqently texel was added so todays belclares are geneticly finn texels
the finn input not only result in the extra triplets and quads but also would improve early season breeding vs the traditonal Lleyn.

Lleyns evolved with the influence of galway/roscommon genetics in the 1800s but was a rare breed 30 years ago the rapid expansion in the last 20 years has meant some texel has been introduced(definitely and no harm either)and probably other breeds to a lesser extent(cheviot?)

I reckon Lleyn is one of the best thing to happen to the irish sheep industry in a long time and if New Zealand breeding principles were applied (emphise preformance and less obsession with 'pedigree')

and the wicklow cheviot could do worse than put a shot of Lleyn/texel in :eek:

ganmo

Lano Lynn wrote: »

and the wicklow cheviot could do worse than put a shot of Lleyn/texel in :eek:

Wicklow cheviots could do with joining sheep ireland and stop breeding so dam tall

arctictree

ganmo wrote: »

Wicklow cheviots could do with joining sheep ireland and stop breeding so dam tall

A cheviot ram broke into some of my Llyens last year. So I have some Cheviot/Llyen lambs. They seem to be doing well. A bit more flighty than the Llyens. Had more lambing losses than the PB Llyens.

Lano Lynn

arctictree wrote: »

A cheviot ram broke into some of my Llyens last year. So I have some Cheviot/Llyen lambs. They seem to be doing well. A bit more flighty than the Llyens. Had more lambing losses than the PB Llyens.

why was there more losses?
was it a wicklow or a NCC?
will you put a lleyn back on the xbred ewe lambs
have to agree very few lleyn lambs lost here

arctictree

Lano Lynn wrote: »

why was there more losses?
was it a wicklow or a NCC?
will you put a lleyn back on the xbred ewe lambs
have to agree very few lleyn lambs lost here

Maybe just bad luck. I have a small flock so its hard to draw conclusions. I bought 6 in lamb llyens scanned with twins and I have 12 llyen lambs in the field now. No losses. The Cheviot/llyens, also had six lambing but ended up with a few dead lambs for various reasons.

Don't know what type of cheviot the
Ram was. Probably Wicklow.

I'm not sure if ill keep the llyen crosses. If so, ill put a llyen ram on them.

Lano Lynn

foolish me of coarse it was a wicklow no one in wicklow uses NCC:D......

metalwood

My original experiment turned out very well with buying the belclare ram.
The lambs were lively and easy enough to finish, good feet and clean and nice looking in the mart.

I kept a good few of the ewe lambs and these in turn lambed as hoggets this year tipped by a Suffolk ram hopping to get speckly faced lambs.

For me all the story's about quads thankfully didn't happen and had 1.8 average over the two years. Very happy with the hoggets plenty of milk, good mothers and lively lambs

The crossing with Suffolk created all black lambs but I suppose you can have everything so all in all a good breed that suits my enterprise and got all that I asked for from the belclare.

Som69

Metalwood do you have any recommendations on who to buy Belclare rams off? I've had Belclare rams for the last number of years and found them to be very successful at increasing the number of lambs weaned per ewe put to the ram. The breeder I previously bought rams off is no longer in business.

Som69

Green farmer wrote: »

Found this old thread. Any up to date thoughts from people on belclare v llyen , as looking for a ram to give me some replacements ?????

I would personally recommend Belclare, especially for breeding replacements. they prove to be excellent mothers with loads of milk and for me I have not experienced many quads or triplets from the ewes. Also I think that they have better conformation, carcases and fatten easier than the Lleyn's making ram lambs easier to finish.

Green farmer

I have only a handfull of belclare ewes around my farm ,but their my favourite ewes to work with. Feet are only average but great mothers. Hopefully I'll have a ram soon as I've targeted one or two of the sales to get one for the stap.

jt65

Som69 wrote: »

Metalwood do you have any recommendations on who to buy Belclare rams off? I've had Belclare rams for the last number of years and found them to be very successful at increasing the number of lambs weaned per ewe put to the ram. The breeder I previously bought rams off is no longer in business.

pm sent

Green farmer

Jt , if you could also mail me the details, I'd give them a buzz too, thanks

Cran

Green farmer wrote: »

Jt , if you could also mail me the details, I'd give them a buzz too, thanks

same please

Green farmer

You'll be on commission next Jt :-)