The Rams
On the topic of breeding sires, no matter the animal, there are numerous ways to go about choosing how to craft and mold your flock or herd. For our flock of sheep, I took the time to sort out precisely how I wanted to make those choices, what my goals were for genetics and traits and how to go about creating a top-shelf flock of sheep
First, I'm not super tied to a breed or standard. Instead, I'm looking for a series of traits in rams and ewes that will reliably be passed down to each year's lamb crop. I selected first for hardiness, carcass and then hair coat. I knew one thing starting out: I didn't want high maintenance animals.
I'm an avid reader and consumer of information on just about whatever catches my fancy and when I got into the sheep business I read all sorts of articles and books on the matter. I knew that I wanted hair sheep - it was hard to imagine voluntarily adding labor to the equation (shearing, hoof trimming). I knew parasites could be an issue too. In reading articles and books by Greg Judy, I was sold on the hardiness of his St Croix breed, but knew they had some drawbacks around frame and weight when it came to selling for meat. I decided to cross that St Croix against the heavier framed Katahdins
I emailed Greg and Jan and arranged to buy a ram from them, and then bought already-bred, registered Katahdin ewes from a great local farmer here in MN. Buying registered gave me peace of mind about reliable breed characteristics, I met the farmer several times (also a great commercial beekeeper) and was sure of the quality of his ewes. They lambed in spring and then I had the original ewes plus their ewe lambs when we went into December to breed with the St Croix ram. He bred them all within about a week as a 6 month old. It was pretty astounding.
Using this Greg Judy ram, we've had precisely zero lambing issues with the ewes, one still born lamb and no lamb deaths after birth in the two years we've used him. It really puts paid to the old saying about "the ram is half your flock"
This year we're keeping our ewe lambs back and trading rams with another MN farmer who bought seed stock from Greg. I also bought a Katahdin ram lamb from a different local farmer. She was selling ewe lambs to me and offered him to me at a fair price. We're in the process of scaling up our flock for this winter's breeding season and while I'm sure a grown ram could get the job done, I'd rather have a second ram batting cleanup then to have some ewes 'miss' or come late.
1. Buy good rams. You can improve your flock rapidly even if you start with mediocre ewes by using a good ram
2. Keep them separate. We keep our rams on the far corner of the farm by our house from June-December. We don't want dead winter lambs and we want to control the breeding window
3. Keep enough rams. Just because someone's ram can breed 100 ewes doesn't mean it's a good idea. I'd rather have two rams covering 40 ewes and then have a one week lambing window.
