Oxford Down Sheep

ruben37

Hi all we are new to the Sheep side of things, have been breeding pedigree Charolais cattle since the early seventy's. Have been thinking for a long time now on investing on a few pedigree Oxford Down ewes and crossing them with a pedigree Charolais ram. Little or nothing to do only convert housing for spring laming, fenced all with sheep wire few years back. My thinking behind the cross is a better covering of wool at birth something that the Charolais breed is lacking while maintaining weight and growth gain. What are sheep breeders thoughts? worth wile or not?

sako 85

Firstly, good luck with the new venture. One thing that strikes me is, why bother with pedigree ewes if you are going to breed cross bred lambs. Also to the best of my knowledge Oxford down sheep are fairly rare and might not be all the readily available. my suggestion would be to purchase some cross bred hoggetts and run a charollais ram with them or but pedigree ewes and run a pedigree ram of the same breed with them.

rangler1

ruben37 wrote: »

Hi all we are new to the Sheep side of things, have been breeding pedigree Charolais cattle since the early seventy's. Have been thinking for a long time now on investing on a few pedigree Oxford Down ewes and crossing them with a pedigree Charolais ram. Little or nothing to do only convert housing for spring laming, fenced all with sheep wire few years back. My thinking behind the cross is a better covering of wool at birth something that the Charolais breed is lacking while maintaining weight and growth gain. What are sheep breeders thoughts? worth wile or not?

Use vendeen, continental breed born with wool, easy lambed,
I believe their similarity to the Oxford Down is due to the use of the Southdown in their breeding.
The story goes that the southdowns were brought to france and used with the local breed ,,,, probably one something like the charolais

Cran

ruben37 wrote: »

Hi all we are new to the Sheep side of things, have been breeding pedigree Charolais cattle since the early seventy's. Have been thinking for a long time now on investing on a few pedigree Oxford Down ewes and crossing them with a pedigree Charolais ram. Little or nothing to do only convert housing for spring laming, fenced all with sheep wire few years back. My thinking behind the cross is a better covering of wool at birth something that the Charolais breed is lacking while maintaining weight and growth gain. What are sheep breeders thoughts? worth wile or not?

I would think might come bit open wooled as Charollais are based on Downs from memory. Also its hard to get decent Oxford sheep, small show types only ones I ve ever seen. Believe the NZ ones are impressive though.

TBH increasing wool on Charollais is a myth for hardiness, Cold Tolerance test way more important than head cover / wool for hardiness.

orm0nd

tried them all over the last 40 years or so , & settled on Hampshire Down for early lambing,

they will take what nature throws at them at come back for more

Edit

Just to add the HD are the sires , on reading op again

IH784man

I would suggest Hampshire downs,if had the money ground to buy more I would,great at rearing lambs and early lambing,one ewe lambed 3 times in 2 years for me.

serfspup

think there are only a few oxford breeders in the north and one in cork sounds like interesting cross.as with all breeding ideas depends on the quality of the seed stock.

have in my head to cross charollais and hampshire sometime just have not got the right hampshire yet.