Sex Ratios

[sheepherder007]

You hear the usual stories about high percentages one way or another of rams and ewes born.  We started with an 80% ram lamb crop in January but I now have one ewe left to lamb and the twins born yesterday were tagged 6060 orange and 6060 green as was one of each.  Can't get any closer to 50/50 than that.

[EmsoffLambs]

That is pretty 50/50 I'd say! I had an interesting last two years as far as sex ratios go. Last year Maximus gave me 19 ewe lambs and 3 rams. This year I only got two ewe lambs from him, the rest being rams. Conversely, ExGames gave me all ewes but 4 this year. Just goes to show that sometimes there is no rhyme or reason to it!

[PeteM]

of our 25 lambs this year, we had 16 ram lambs and 9 ewe lambs. I was thinking that using ram lambs this fall might have played a roll. I just know we are not showing next year and we might have the best set of lambs we ever had. Ram and ewe lambs.

[Bigiron59]

Age of the ram has nothing to do with it. Some work suggests that breeding on grass will lead to more of one sex nd breeding on grain will be the other Wayne

Early group of hair ewes drylot
38 ram lamps 4 ewe lamb
Magic Mike hamps. 30 ewe lambs 7 ram lambs
Trophy dash. Hamps 5 ewe lambs 2 rams
Thriller Hamp 1 ram 5 ewes
Teddy Dorset 5 rams 10 ewes on Dorset. Did not count on commercial
Second go round of hair ewes. More ewe lambs than males, but not enough to balance the first gripping

I don't care as live lambs always bring more than dead ones an ewe lambs are easier to sell than males.
With current  Wether sales,  plenty of big boy breeders lambs available  at entry level price,  so nice to have ewe lambs to sell.

[tsylvester]

Here are my numbers for this season...

Southdown   
Fertility   94%
Mortality   19%
Female   62%
Male           38%
Lambs per ewe   170%

Hampshire   
Fertility   94%
Mortality     0%
Female   44%
Male           56%
Lambs per ewe   110%

[Don Drewry]

Smaller the flock, the more likely the ratios will be distorted.  Just the way normal data scatter works.  If you lamb 10 ewes you are much more likely to have a severe imbalance.  If you lamb 1000 ewes numbers will almost always be fairly even.  This causes small flocks owners to look for "reasons" for the variation when it's must normal scatter and makes for some amusing conclusions sometimes.

[MizLiz]

My montadales always seem to have more males than females, with last year having 9 rams and 2 speckle ewe lambs. This year I had about 60% males, with most born later than females. I like the females just cause how many Rams does a girl need anyhow ;-) crossing my fingers I can get some falls and a 90% ewe lamb crop, lol