What cross makes the best ewe?

DJ98

In your opinion.

Sheep breeder

The ewe that rears two lambs and no feed and no dosing and no shearing and no lameness and her lambs make 300 euros each and looks real fancy!!!!!

DJ98

Sheep breeder wrote: »

The ewe that rears two lambs and no feed and no dosing and no shearing and no lameness and her lambs make 300 euros each and looks real fancy!!!!!

In a realistic world

Willfarman

i have nearly every cross of the mainstream breeds here. suffolk cheviot blackface charolais texel lyen belclare vendeen...... which are best? my feelings these days are who the **** knows.. all i know is they are all woolly vermin!!

they are hardship regardless what colour head they have..

Kevhog1988

Im going to be buying suffolk or Suffolk x belclare

stantheman1979

Depends on the system I guess but everyone is going to have they're own preferences. We've tried to breed a maternal flock mainly belclare, lleyn and Romney. Some fellas would laugh at me but it works for us. Another man I know reckons you're at nothing unless there's a horned ewe somewhere in the breeding

Kevhog1988

stantheman1979 wrote: »

Depends on the system I guess but everyone is going to have they're own preferences. We've tried to breed a maternal flock mainly belclare, lleyn and Romney. Some fellas would laugh at me but it works for us. Another man I know reckons you're at nothing unless there's a horned ewe somewhere in the breeding

how prolific are the romneys? Was looking at them but read they rarely give doubles.

stantheman1979

At the moment we're crossing Romney rams onto belclare and lleyn ewes to try have a lower maintenance flock but try keep the prolifically of the belclare. Early stages to judge but signs are good. Lost a lot less lambs this yr about 6%. Ewes have more milk and better mothering ability. We scanned 1.85 this yr but hoping to push it higher next year. Time will tell!!

rangler1

stantheman1979 wrote: »

At the moment we're crossing Romney rams onto belclare and lleyn ewes to try have a lower maintenance flock but try keep the prolifically of the belclare. Early stages to judge but signs are good. Lost a lot less lambs this yr about 6%. Ewes have more milk and better mothering ability. We scanned 1.85 this yr but hoping to push it higher next year. Time will tell!!

Yea, you need the belclare influence, for maternal ability and prolificacy,
You mightn't think it but you have a nice scanning rate there, losses will go up with increased scanning rate and a scanning rate of 2 two mightn't yeild that many more lambs in the field

stantheman1979

I fully understand where you're coming from rangler. Higher scanning rates mean more multiples. Which is more meal and more also more smaller lambs to deal with and more work but I think we could push it a little bit higher. Like everyone I don't want quads but If I could just have less singles it would mean less adoptions which would cut down work also. I've a machine to rear the triplets and it's no bother training them on it.