Stephanie, Most of my ewes get bred this first time around 5 to 6 months. I have known of one to get bred at 4 months and she did fine. She may have been behind the others as far as size is concerned for a couple of years, but nothing to worry about. IMO, ewes that get bred from 4 to 6 months may take a little longer to get there, but they will eventually reach their genetic potential in size. Most are going to have singles anyway. No big deal.
Cows, in comparison, are so much more domesticated that they HAVE to have human intervention. Due to a cow's size their joints have to be taken into consideration when talking about breeding age. Survival of the fittest is a losing proposition in cattle. It might be the same for ewelambs if they were always getting pregnant with triplets at 4 months old, but I don't know of that happening. Nature would likely weed those genes out anyway. For the last couple of years I have only had one "sire" (adult ram). Ideally I would prefer to have several choice rams to fight it out, but I have more buyers than rams lately. In years past though, that is exactly what I did. Several of the "picks" got to decide who would do the breeding and once it was decided, THAT ram did ALL the breeding as far as I could tell. That ram would always be the one with the ewes off to the side. It was obvious who the boss was just in the way they interacted. As far as raising rams together, my experience has been they get along great and only have very minor skirmishes when ewes come in heat. The biggest problem is usually the younger rams(6 months to a year) trying to steal a breeding. They can be a pest sometimes. A lot depends on the personality of the "boss" though. Some rams seem to command more respect than others. I have had some rams that spent about half their time chasing off the youngsters and others that never had to. I haven't really figured that one out yet. Chris B. > > From: Stephanie Parrish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: 2007/04/12 Thu AM 09:31:47 EDT > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [blackbelly] Do we have to have a ram? > > Chris, > > At what age do you find your ewe lambs tend to get bred? Have there > been any that you thought were bred "too soon", that resulted in > dystocia, or in the mother not growing well? I've heard cattle people > say that once a heifer is bred she stops growing, so it's best to keep > her separated until the "proper" breeding age (which for cattle is > supposed to be around 15 mos) so she can attain her full size. Of > course, there are those that don't agree with this. I've also heard > that sheep should wait until 5-6 mos to be bred, for similar reasons. > > Am very interested in your comments on this, as your way of management > is certainly much less complicated than having to keep separate groups > of females. > > I do want to continue to keep my rams in a separate group from the > females, because I'm doing a rotational-type breeding program where I > use a different ram for each breeding cycle. And I need to know which > ram did the breeding, so I only turn one in at a time. So, can't get > away from keeping a separate group of males, in my situation, but it > would be nice to not worry about separating the females. Do you know > which of your rams breeds the ewes, or does that not matter for your > program? Also, do your rams not fight with each other since they've > all grown up together, even though they're all in with the ewes? > > Totally agree with you on the value of good livestock guardian dogs. I > have 2 Maremmas (brother/sister pair) who are so far doing a very good > job for us. There are coyotes eating the neighboring calves, but, > knock on wood, not our sheep. > > Stephanie Parrish > Westminster, SC > > On Apr 11, 2007, at 12:31 PM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > As far as leaving the ram with my ewes, I never separate any of them. > > Ewes, ewelambs, rams, ramlambs, all run together and get bred whenever > > nature will allow it. Most ewes get bred back in about 2 months, > > making my lambings about 7 months apart on average. > > My farm is run by "survival of the fittest", I don't interact with my > > sheep except to sell them. No wormers, no shots, no trimming, no > > separating. I give my sheep hay in the winter and I provide them with > > a guard dog (Anatolian Shepherd) to protect them and that is it. The > > guard dog (Turk) is worth his weight in gold. I highly recommend them. > > Also, NEVER bottle raise a ram without banding him. > > _______________________________________________ > This message is from the blackbelly mailing list > Visit the list's homepage at %http://www.blackbellysheep.info > _______________________________________________ This message is from the blackbelly mailing list Visit the list's homepage at %http://www.blackbellysheep.info
