Cull ewes

Green farmer

Valid reasons to cull ewes ?

fanadman1

Bad Feet
Bad Udders
Lack of Teeth
Prolaps
Bad lambs
Poor milk yeild.
Thats kinda what i go for here. Im sure i am missing something from my list. I culled some that i could not get into good condition again last year befor mating.

Green farmer

Would you cull ewes that always have in the past given twins but moved to giving singles started giving singles even if they had the full set of teeth, or older ewes that started going the other way and popped out triplets. Or young ewes that kept popping out singles and wouldn't give twins.
The reason for these questions is they say the single lamb just covers the costs and the second lamb is your profit, so should anything that's not giving you a profit get the road ?

Jack180570

Green farmer wrote: »

Valid reasons to cull ewes ?

IMO culling reasons depend on the quality of your flock currently, the type of land you have and whether you want to go more intensive.

Essential Culling reasons:
1. Prolapse - she will do it again
2. Mastitis - if she has twins or gets mastitis again she cant feed her lamb(s)
3. Bad mothers - if you are not around at lambing the lambs will die
4. Broken Mouths - cant eat properly so will be poorly
5. Persistent footrot - will happen again
All the above conditions will result in a significant waste of your management time and will incur direct costs which will not be repaid.
In addition to culling the ewe, her lambs should not be kept for breeding as many of the above traits are highly heritable.

Desirable culling reasons
6. Prolificacy - more lambs (if you system suits) will mean more profit
7. Age - keep flock young as they are better able to withstand hardship
If you run a hill flock then you will also want to keep a relatively young flock of hardy ewes so age is a valid culling reason for hill flocks.

Once you have culled for all the above reasons and you have a plentiful supply of Ewe Lambs as replacements then you should move to selecting the ones with the most desirable traits as your replacements. This is where we are going ourselves and to aid this we have moved to electronic tagging of all lambs at birth and recording everything with the TGM software and scanner... after a few years we will be able to look back over the database and for instance pick the ewes that produced the most kg's of lamb over the last 3 years

ganmo

it sounds strange but we cull bitches ie those that just make life hell
theyre very good at teaching the next generation their bad habits

MayoAreMagic

I wouldn't be one for culling for age in hill ewes at all. Longevity is part of what makes them worth having. It is possible to get ewes of 10 or more rearing twins on the hill with all her teeth intact, and when you do get one like that, you want to propagate her traits rather than cull her. As long as they are performing, don't worry about their age.

Jack180570

MayoAreMagic wrote: »

I wouldn't be one for culling for age in hill ewes at all. Longevity is part of what makes them worth having. It is possible to get ewes of 10 or more rearing twins on the hill with all her teeth intact, and when you do get one like that, you want to propagate her traits rather than cull her. As long as they are performing, don't worry about their age.

I agree that as long as they are performing to keep them... that is why I noted it as the last reason for culling.... I have a 5 or 6 ewes that are 13 years old, beautiful sheep, mostly full mouths, always throwing twins and loads of milk.... Yes, they are the ones to keep when they have all those good traits...
One in particular this year had our first set of quads (one came out dead) but she will have to go because she has only one teat... left her with two lovely ewe lambs and pulled the 3rd lamb off as a pet as he was a ram lamb... looking forward to seeing how those two perform over the next few years :-)

J.O. Farmer

MayoAreMagic wrote: »

I wouldn't be one for culling for age in hill ewes at all. Longevity is part of what makes them worth having. It is possible to get ewes of 10 or more rearing twins on the hill with all her teeth intact, and when you do get one like that, you want to propagate her traits rather than cull her. As long as they are performing, don't worry about their age.

You raise a good point. would many use records of the age of ewes when culling or would they look in the mouth. I'd always go by the mouth and if that was good I wouldn't be culling for old age.

Green farmer

Any of ye come across ewes that would give birth to twins , but decide for some reason or other they'd only like to raise one and ignore the other twin. Had 3 cases of it here this year. All 2-3 year old sheep. Wouldn't mind but nothing wrong with the lambs, not sickly or anything. Anyway another 3 candidates for the factory , later in the season

Jack180570

Green farmer wrote: »

Any of ye come across ewes that would give birth to twins , but decide for some reason or other they'd only like to raise one and ignore the other twin. Had 3 cases of it here this year. All 2-3 year old sheep. Wouldn't mind but nothing wrong with the lambs, not sickly or anything. Anyway another 3 candidates for the factory , later in the season

Yep, several times... even this year had a ewe that had trips, one very weak lamb and left her in the pen with the other two lambs but bottle fed her until she was strong enough to feed off the ewe.... and then the ewe rejected her and almost killed her in the pen... had to take out and add her the the pen of pet lambs...
I guess it was either a case that the ewe had lost connection with the 3rd lamb or she felt she couldn't feed the 3rd lamb. I wont cull her as she is a fine ewe and will have no problem raising the twins.

J.O. Farmer

Jack180570 wrote: »

Yep, several times... even this year had a ewe that had trips, one very weak lamb and left her in the pen with the other two lambs but bottle fed her until she was strong enough to feed off the ewe.... and then the ewe rejected her and almost killed her in the pen... had to take out and add her the the pen of pet lambs...
I guess it was either a case that the ewe had lost connection with the 3rd lamb or she felt she couldn't feed the 3rd lamb. I wont cull her as she is a fine ewe and will have no problem raising the twins.

I'd say that she lost connection. You were better taking all the lambs away if taking one for any length of time. In the case of triplets you'd probably try to foster the third on anyway but it's a bit of disaster with twins.

In general with twins if 1 wanders off say while she's having the second the ewe can seem to forget about the first and then end up rejecting the lamb. Not sure if it's grounds for culling.

sea12

J.O. Farmer wrote: »

I'd say that she lost connection. You were better taking all the lambs away if taking one for any length of time. In the case of triplets you'd probably try to foster the third on anyway but it's a bit of disaster with twins.

In general with twins if 1 wanders off say while she's having the second the ewe can seem to forget about the first and then end up rejecting the lamb. Not sure if it's grounds for culling.

Had 1 last year that did that even though I lambed both in a single pen. She just decided she only wanted 1

Lano Lynn

Dragging this up as I think it is time when shepherds are getting ready for breeding season and I have a very strong belief that it does not get half enough attention.

I breed all my own replacements and for years I have ear notched for culling any ewe that causes any bother at lambing and believe it has resulted in a lot less problems and a lower cull rate. I also mark the ewe lambs from ewes with prolapse & mastitis to make sure they are not retained.

this year at shearing I realised that a hogget that was notched had made it through and had lambed 'Lucky you I said'
was gathering yesterday and who should come in dragging a leg with a bad dose of mastitis none other than 'Lucky'

200+ ewes and she is only the second case of mastitis since turnout.........it seems there can be only one conclusion notching ears increases the chance of them developing problems

arctictree

I culled really hard this year as I never got around to it last year.

66% of my flock is marked to go. Only young ewes with no lambing/milk problems and who weaned big healthy lambs were kept.

Was a bit of a pain as I had to turn over every ewe and check her lambing notes. Worth it though.

MayoAreMagic

arctictree wrote: »

I culled really hard this year as I never got around to it last year.

66% of my flock is marked to go. Only young ewes with no lambing/milk problems and who weaned big healthy lambs were kept.

Was a bit of a pain as I had to turn over every ewe and check her lambing notes. Worth it though.

Does that mean that 66% of your flock gave problems in the last 2 years?

arctictree

MayoAreMagic wrote: »

Does that mean that 66% of your flock gave problems in the last 2 years?

Yes, That's right, or had undersized lambs...