Messages

31

All Sheep and Lamb Discussion / Re: How many of you guys have done excellerated lambing?

« on: December 22, 2016, 07:45:51 am »

I did it with Polypays for several years.  Usually it's lambing 3 times in 2 years, so you have a fall group, winter group and spring group.  That means you need lots of pens as you almost always have some ewes raising lamb, some just weaned lambs, keeper ewe lambs waiting to get bred, ewes with rams,, ...

IMO it increases the chances of mastitis on the ewes.

32

All Sheep and Lamb Discussion / Re: Online Sheep Show

« on: December 15, 2016, 06:42:32 am »

I suspect it's waiting to see how missed it is.  If you wish the OLSS was still going weigh in.

33

Buy and Sell / MN Bred ewe sale - November 26, 2016

« on: November 24, 2016, 06:40:36 am »

Minnesota Bred ewe sale is this Saturday.  Show at 9:00 AM sale at 1:00 PM.  Several breeds , wether dams, registered Hamps, Suffolks, Dorsets, Southdowns ....

If you want a fitted sheep the registered sheep are very high quality and a good place to go.  Many of these breeders (particularly the Hamps) excel at national shows and win many state shows.

Wether dams include 3 of our ewes, Kinsely and Sobota's.  Two of our ewes are out of Strykeforce.  We sold some of their half sisters last fall and 2 of them placed 2nd and 5th in the state 4-H show yearling club lamb ewe class.  I think these fit right in with those for quality.  The other we have is a March born Annuity daughter that while genetically she'd be a sure keeper March ewes lamb so late she won't contribute to a sellable lamb for 2 years in our system.  She's a very correct ewe.  See that catalog for the sale here:  http://www.mnhampshires.org/minnesota-bred-ewe-sale/

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All Sheep and Lamb Discussion / Happy Thanksgiving

« on: November 24, 2016, 06:33:00 am »

I posted on FB some of the things I'm thankful for but many of you aren't FB friends with me.  (Although I do say yes to anyone requesting to be a friend that I see a sheep in the photos.).  Feel free to add what your thankful for today.


Some things I'm thankful for
1. Health of my immediate family
2. Return of my son last week from deployment and that we could be there to help him deal stress and issues resulting from his storage unit being broken into and the theft of many valuable items.  (I had thought these were fairly secure).
3. That my career as a Financial Advisor is accelerating
4. That we live in a country that DOES have (reminder to some) peaceful transitions of power.
5. That our sheep look like they are all doing fine

35

All Sheep and Lamb Discussion / Re: Fair carcass lamb judging

« on: November 16, 2016, 07:51:35 am »

Are you looking for the evaluation of the hanging carcasses, or a live evaluation of lambs that will have their carcasses measured?  For the actual carcass assessment, most use the %BCTRC formula.  See; https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiJu43uz63QAhVD4iYKHR6RC_0QFggmMAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sdstate.edu%2Fagriculture-biological-sciences%2Fanimal-science%2Fsheep-grading&usg=AFQjCNHPYq4Cs91yxwGMFcsV47svWyuTFQ&sig2=NCGaezAJCYkCGOzzFthfhw&bvm=bv.139138859,d.eWE

If it's the live evaluation, what did you not like about last year's judge?

36

All Sheep and Lamb Discussion / Re: Grafting lambs

« on: November 16, 2016, 07:46:40 am »

Crystal, I'm impressed you had some success.  I think the biggest factor that is unappreciated is the genetics of the ewe.  I've had daughters of some rams that will never accept a grafted lamb.  I've tried everything I could think of with and without the head gate, (dead lamb skinned, various smelling agents, coating the lamb with her milk, feeding the lamb only the ewes milk, ....)  I have good success wet grafting lambs where the ewe will clean a lamb off.  Occasionally the other techniques work but too often eventually the ewe would break or kill the lamb I was trying to graft.  My head gate now serves as a extra creep panel.

37

All Sheep and Lamb Discussion / Re: Lost CIDR

« on: October 31, 2016, 04:08:11 pm »

Last year I implanted ewes in early August.  When we sheared the ewes in mid October the shearer pointed out that one still had a CIDR in her (of course in the most courteous manner possible).  She was well marked by the ram.  After 12-14 days there really isn't any hormones left to release.  So, other than the possible mechanical irritation it shouldn't hurt her.  I wouldn't think her cervix would allow the CIDR to go in farther so, it's most likely in the pen somewhere.   I did have one that I really have to stick my fingers in as far as they could go to extract as the tail had gone in.  You could have someone with longer fingers go exploring.

38

All Sheep and Lamb Discussion / Re: How old was your oldest ram?

« on: October 29, 2016, 05:57:20 am »

Not much difference in how I feed ewes and ram lambs.  I don't see the ewes die young like the club lamb rams tend to do.  I'm quite confident that we do have a sex linked negative trait that kills these rams.  It would be possible diet and other things impact it.

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All Sheep and Lamb Discussion / Re: How old was your oldest ram?

« on: October 26, 2016, 04:47:22 pm »

We've had a couple of black face rams that have lived past 8.  It seems an awful lot are programed to die as 2 or 3 year olds.  Several I've used for 2 years and sold them and then I don't hear what happens to them when the 3rd owner gets them as 4 or 5 year olds.

40

All Sheep and Lamb Discussion / Re: LAI results

« on: October 22, 2016, 07:56:31 am »

Bigiron, I don't have an opinion on whether alfalfa is good or bad for # of lambs born.  I've never fed alfalfa that time of year as we save it for ewe's with lambs or late gestation.  We don't save for any other reason than the nutritional needs of the ewes are much higher later so that's when we give the best hay. 

Our protocol for triplets or twins from a ewe with half an udder is very similar to what the high producer does.  We pull the odd sized triplet off the ewe immediately and tube it with colostrum.  We aim for an ounce per pound in the first 12 hours so apparently we give them quite bit more.  I don't like lambs on the lamb bar getting to eat from mom at all.  I think they train on the bar much quicker if they've only sucked on the lamb bar.  I don't even like giving them a bottle.  It's the tube or the lamb bar.  That way the only way for them to satisfy their sucking instinct is to learn to use the lamb bar.  Seems to work pretty good. It always takes a lot longer to train a lamb that for whatever reason has been on a ewe some number of days.

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All Sheep and Lamb Discussion / Re: Off ewe

« on: October 22, 2016, 07:49:42 am »

We have a 10 year old ewe that has decided she doesn't need to go out to pasture with the other ewes anymore.  This caused her to get fairly thin.  Finally, I put her in the barn alleys and she eats grass from our back yard and I give her grain every day.  If I put her with the other ewes, I'm sure she'd not eat enough pasture and her temperature would drop like you see in your ewe.  In a few days I will separate the rams back from the ewes and put all my ewe lambs in a pen where they get better feed then the older ewes.  Our pastures are just about done too so I'll put the old lady with the ewe lambs for the winter.  Lucky for this ewe she's the mother of multiple stud rams we've used and several of our best ewes so I tolerate  her self promotion to royal status.

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All Sheep and Lamb Discussion / Re: Do you guys feed grain to ewes before lambing?

« on: October 10, 2016, 11:19:26 am »

Given all the line breeding in the club lamb industry, it's not much of stretch to say in general the Hampshire style club lambs are more "pure" than any of the "purebred" breeds out there.  I'd wager multiple beers if we compared genetics of any random 4 flocks of the Hampshire type that half of our rams pedigrees have multiple common sires 3 or 4 generations back.  If a breeder is also using a Suffolk style ram than you'd have a crossbred type lambs, but the flocks that have used only Hamp style club lamb rams for several years aren't really crossbreds which is the bulk of the industry now.  Consider the trend for using ET so you have several common ewes in many pedigrees now.  Additionally, the trend in the industry for many of the top breeders is to turn their ewes over every 4 to 5 years they are getting more generations in 10 year time period which increases the homozygous nature of the flock.

When we followed Dan M's ration advice we saw a 4 pound increase in birthweights, when I dropped the protein level to half way between what I was feeding and what he recommended we got a nice 2 lb increase.  That incidentally was with 100% registered sheep.  If the response is due to crossbreeding, you'd expect to see a variety in birth weights but I see relatively consistent birth weights once you accommodate for litter size, age of dam and sex of lamb.   

To confuse the issue with facts.  If you look at the NSIP terminal sire reports, the greatest variation in birthweight EBVs is 2.23 pounds in the Suffolk breed,  Hamps, Dorsets and Shrops spread is less than 2 pounds.  For the middle 80% of the EBVs in these breeds, the spread is well under 1 pound.  So, what that says for 80% of the rams you can use, they will impact the birth weight less than a pound.  So, if you have ewes that have well below average birth weights you'd only expect them to increase by use 80% of the rams, 1 pound and even if you bought the "worst case" ram the most you'd see increase is less than 2 lbs in 3 of the breeds, and only 2.23 pounds if you were breeding the Suffolk ewe with the lowest birth weight to the ram with the highest birthweight  So from a practical standpoint for most flocks, using a new ram, you might impact birth weights perhaps an average of 1/2 pound.

43

All Sheep and Lamb Discussion / Re: Do you guys feed grain to ewes before lambing?

« on: October 07, 2016, 10:06:19 pm »

I'd agree with Crystal's point.  Number of lambs in the litter impact birth weights a great deal.  I don't ever remember a ewe lamb having trouble if she has twins but I have had too big of single lambs if I fed the ewe lambs too well.  I also agree that ram lambs are almost always larger than ewe lambs.  In thinking about this some, the physical trait that probably is fairly highly correlated to large lambs is cannon bone length.  Larger framed ewes tend to have bigger lambs even if they smaller framed but more muscular ewes weigh the same.

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All Sheep and Lamb Discussion / Re: Do you guys feed grain to ewes before lambing?

« on: October 07, 2016, 11:46:42 am »

Jim, in the practical world yes it does make sense to mix sheep up to keep your number of pens down.

As long as you don't get carried away with the feed it's OK to feed the ewes in late gestation.  Shane is extremely correct when he predicts some will disagree that lamb size is primarily genetics.  I'd actually says it's usually MOSTLY feed, but when feed is constant genetics does matter.  It took NSIP a long time to be able to even figure out how to make a birth weight EBV as it's not that inheritable.  Factors that influence birth weights are probably in this order IMO, 1) Age of dam, (ewe lamb will have smaller lambs when lambing at 12-15 months then they will a year later), 2) Weight of dam, 4) underfeeding the ewe (underfed ewes have too small of lambs), 4) oversupplying nutrients (particularly protein), 5) Mature weight of sire. 

I'm not sure your % protein of the total grain ration but in my experience if I hit 14% or more in the grain for mature ewes we see too big of lambs.  I've played with protein % in my ration and can predict the impact on the lambs born about 3 weeks later.

45

All Sheep and Lamb Discussion / Re: looking to buy some ewes

« on: September 21, 2016, 06:40:39 am »

Jim, this time a year it's probably easier for them to buy bred ewes.  If they did that and kept a ewe lamb then they could breed all of them to your ram next year.