How do you pick your replacements ?

Green farmer

Just wondering what are the characteristics you look for in your replacements. Do you buy them in or breed your own, etc ?

Cran

Green farmer wrote: »

Just wondering what are the characteristics you look for in your replacements. Do you buy them in or breed your own, etc ?

I've been running bit of an experiment in one of the flocks here for breeding own replacements. Buying in some of a certain breed and use them to produce replacements, then recording the replacements from birth. Aim is to find another maternal breed to cross back again as doing all this recording for one generation is bit of a waste of time really.

I take a maternal breed approach to breeding ewes, expect my terminal sire to add whats required to produce factory lambs. Two approachs to picking replacements, firstly overall breeding and then secondly individual lambs.

Overall
1. Fecundity - required level to scan atleast 1.8
2. Outside lambing traits of breeding

Individual lambs
1. Correctness (mouth etc)
2. Feet
3. Performance from birth to weaning
4. Ease of lambing

rangler1

Green farmer wrote: »

Just wondering what are the characteristics you look for in your replacements. Do you buy them in or breed your own, etc ?

We breed our own, we'd be very aware of bad thrivers in the lambs and would cull the mothers, always put the best looking ewes to the maternal ram and cul the poorest 10 - 15 of the ewe lambs then, we don't prioritise ewes that were doubles themselves, flock is prolific enough.
Any ewes that give trouble during the year..lambing, lameness, etc are culled and their lambs flagged for the factory

AnFeirmeoir

For me it's mainly about litter size as this is what I'm trying to work on.
I have been keeping records every year for each ewe at lambing.

The ewes with the most lambs per year age get picked first for going to maternal ram.
Then some hoggots also to make up the numbers I need.

Ewes with any problems at lambing or anything else I don like get assigned to the terminal ram. Al his lambs get sold no matter what.

Green farmer

I went through the ewe lambs recently. Had to pick off the best of them to introduce into flock. Wasn't very scientific, but picked off the ones who grew best and had long slender faces. Then excluded any of them that were any bit lame or had a dirty end, or had fly strike during the summer. They all went to my new llyen. It's on my mind to try and breed worm and fly resistant ewes.

ganmo

Tge way it works is a bit nuts...we keep most of our cheviot ewe lambs and breed them as hoggets. The number of hoggets coming into the flock determines how many older ewes we can sell.
The ewe lambs come from the younger ewes and the older ones go to the Suffolk ram so really that should be turned on its head to get any improvement

Connemara Farmer

Green farmer wrote: »

Just wondering what are the characteristics you look for in your replacements. Do you buy them in or breed your own, etc ?

Weighing maybe three times in the year, twice for STAP, so in or around the 40 days mark for milk they reckon, then I think it's 120 days (I'd have to look it up). Then ANother time either before or after that, not overly scientific really.

Record those numbers and compare the sets at decision time. Maybe there's a lamb done well at 40 days but fallen off for some reason after that So a bit of horse trading between figures goes on.

I like to pick them from ewes that have lambed in the first 17 days. But, a lamb that has done well outside of that will be considered.

Dirty, lame, brown/black in the wool are black marks. Even though I kept two this year have small amount of brown.

Not bothered whether a replacement is a twin or single after this year.

Anything related to a "poor dooer" won't be selected anyway, but their mother will, for the road. Though for some reason thin ewes have made up this bunch this year. Shepherds fault methinks.

MayoAreMagic

There are lots of things to consider. I suppose a neat way to sum it up is you are looking for style with substance. I am of the thinking, get them all up to scratch performance wise, then favour the ones who catch the eye. The result is - in theory anyway - ewes that don't give you trouble and perform well, so you can concentrate on admiring them.

I remove ewes that have a tendency for twins, and then struggle to rear them on the land I have. It is trouble you don't need for lambs that you will be left with. These ewes would be fine in a lowland environment, but for me, they are more time and effort than they are worth. As for ewes that struggle to rear a single lamb - that isn't on her first lambing, I'd not only sack her, but start scrutinising her father.

Teeth is something that I am particular about. Ewes with bad teeth are sold quite young and rams with bad teeth don't get into the field. I think they should have them until they are 9-10 to be deemed good enough. Long teeth are a no-no, you cant do much with them breeding-wise.
A good leg, short clean wool and a nice high wide horn too - the way I see it, it is as easy to have these traits as not have them, and they are attractive when selling animals.

Future Farmer

Green farmer wrote: »

Just wondering what are the characteristics you look for in your replacements. Do you buy them in or breed your own, etc ?

Hi Green Farmer,

Only have a few sheep at home at the moment but we used to have lots - in Wicklow.

What we used to do was carry an ear notch & if a ewe would had a problem we would take a notch from her ear - such as - prolapse, chronic lameness, triplets (in our system it wasn't a runner), masitsis, these were all- three notches (triplets on other ear), smaller issues were 1 notch. These ewes were culled or for lesser digressions put only to Terminal Rams.

Ewe lambs & Hoggets were all put to CH ram and all off-spring were killed. So a ewe had to be on her minimum 2nd crop of off-spring to make it to be breeding replacements.

Also we valued longevity in our flock so ewes were rarely culled for age, and older ewes were minded, in the opinion that these ewes were saving us money in the long-run.

Our replacements were:
Speckled Face, Cheviot, Mule, Kerry Hill, Horny x Kerry Hill, so we had a broad run of Hill Sheep (all replacements bred on farm but Hornys bought in)

Rams ran:
Cheviot, Suffolk, Kerry Hill - primarily for replacements.
Charolais & Texel - Terminal sires.