Mountain Sheep as the Male Cross

Jonny303

Hi,

Purely interest more than anything else but do people ever reverse the traditional cross (upland ewe x lowland ram) to the opposite (upland ram x lowland ewe)? Its just something I have always wondered but I've never come across a flock of Suffolk ewes running with a Wicklow Cheviot ram!

MayoAreMagic

Bit of a backward step to be honest. With running a lowland ram on mountain ewes, you are 'trading up' in value. Your place might only be able to hold mountain sheep in the winter, but you can produce some crossbred lambs in the summer to lift income. In your example, your place is already good enough to hold purebred lowland sheep all year round, so what is to be gained from producing crossbred lambs off them? You are just taking all the lambing troubles of purebred lowland animals, like poor mothering etc, and producing the same thing the guy down the road would produce off the mountain sheep with all their maternal traits making that process much easier for him.

serfspup

used to sell a fair few cheviot rams into roscommon & east galway for crossing on ewes gone too suffolky

some guys use a horned ram on ewe lambs

razor8

A screw horny store ram tipped 40 ewes on my father one year. Was some sickner seeing good ewes lambing horned lambs, there feet was a nightmare

fanadman1

Few lads here used cheviot rams of good suffock ewes. It was a very good cross

farawaygrass

I done exactly what you said for 3 years-wicklow cheviot ram on sufflock ewes. Nearly kept all the ewes as replacements, and sold the rest of the lambs no bother too. The only thing is the ewes are a bit more wild than normal. The ewes are good mothers and lovely milk.
It's good to change up the breeding every now and again imo

MayoAreMagic

serfspup wrote: »

used to sell a fair few cheviot rams into roscommon & east galway for crossing on ewes gone too suffolky

some guys use a horned ram on ewe lambs

It would be fair enough if you weren't happy with the animals you had at present alright, i.e. replacing them with a hardier stock - and you were keeping crossbred animals anyway. Probably a pretty standard move then. The OP stated a pure Suffolk flock as an example, so I figured he meant specifically purebred animals.


razor, bad feet? I don't think that would be coming from the horny side to be honest with you, they would be known for having good feet, in fact probably the best feet. Maybe it was just a bad specimen of a tup or something?

razor8

MayoAreMagic wrote: »

It would be fair enough if you weren't happy with the animals you had at present alright, i.e. replacing them with a hardier stock - and you were keeping crossbred animals anyway. Probably a pretty standard move then. The OP stated a pure Suffolk flock as an example, so I figured he meant specifically purebred animals.


razor, bad feet? I don't think that would be coming from the horny side to be honest with you, they would be known for having good feet, in fact probably the best feet. Maybe it was just a bad specimen of a tup or something?

They had terrible Shelly feet, ewes were fine and lambs very bad. It was definitely the tup

Jonny303

Cheers for the feedback, as I said it was only curiosity.

Your right, I do have a flock of purebred Suffolks but am looking at taking a load of Cheviot ewes this year. We always run into the same problem as we are lambing nice and early for the purebred sales, we are left with too much grass come later in the year. The plan is to use our suffolk rams on good wicklow cheviot ewes and lamb them later.