Bring in the Rams!
Today I went and picked up my breeding rams, half of the genetics for my entire crop of lambs this year, from Lambshire Polypays in Wayne County Ohio. I got a lovely tour of John’s farm and got to see his adorable little border collie at work. We saw his breeding ewes and the sisters of the rams in the barn before getting into the details to make a decision.
John, the farmer, is very passionate about NSIP (the National Sheep Improvement Plan) and he puts a lot of time into tracking all sorts of genetic qualities in his sheep. Did you know that parasite resistance, number of lambs born from one pregnancy, vigor, lamb weight at birth and weaning and so much more is all connected back to breeding? There are a lot of things to look at when it comes to selecting a ram for your flock besides just the physical aspects you can see and I was definitely in good hands with John and his spreadsheet of different variables.
There were about ten rams in the pen which had all been born September of 2022. I had expressed that parasite resistance was important to me and I didn’t want a ram that would throw HUGE lambs since all of my ewes were first time moms. John pointed out the ram who had the best theoretical scores for my goals, but he was the worst looking guy in the bunch! He looked scraggly, he was much smaller than everyone else, and just didn’t fit the picture of a perfect ram I was looking for.
So we took a different approach. Instead of looking at the papers first, we started with a few good looking rams and then looked at their stats. I immediately chose #2050, he was extremely long bodied and well filled out in comparison to the rest. His back end was wide as well as his shoulders and he had a very attractive look. When we looked at his stats we discovered that he was a single :( but that wasn’t a make or break. Number of lambs in one pregnancy is much more related to the maternal or mothers side of the tree, so really I couldn’t hold #2050’s singleness against him.
We looked at two more boys after I had pretty much decided I was taking #2050 home with me. John explained, and I agreed, that it was definitely best to have a pair of rams working my ewes. Not only do I have too many for a single ram to breed (in a reasonable time frame), but there is also risk that the ram I take home would be infertile. Another benefit of working your rams in pairs is that they view each other as competition and ”get on it” a little faster and more vigorously. So I was deciding between two or three rams in the pen for my “second pick” and ultimately decided on #2048. He was large like #2050, though a little more narrow. He had good values for all the things John tracks though a little low on the parasite resistance if that is actually something I was using as a deciding factor for my choices. I do feel a little bad that I ignored a lot of John’s advice when it came to all the data he had collected, but I had to fall back on what I knew from 4-H and goats, sort of judging like a judge based on the look of the animals in front of me and using the genetic statistics to weed out if I got stuck between a few options.
So we took #2050 (now named Arturo) and #2048 (now named Oxalis) home to the farm. We put them in a temporary electric fence along the side of a hay field to manage the grass height and hang out for a bit before I was ready to start breeding in July. I am so excited for the pairing of these absolutely gorgeous boys with my strong, solid looking ewes. Lambing is on for December 2023!