Mating 2024
The old saying, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, snaked into my head as Zoro strutted towards me, larger than life and fatter than butter. A short, stout ram, he held himself well and boasted immaculate hooves. Using him for a third year would go against our breeding plan but treating the plan as a guideline instead of gospel gives us the flexibility that is needed when situations like this come along. Which, I suppose, is the essence of farming. You can plan all you want but at the end of the day that piece of paper with numerous scribbles on it usually gets thrown out the window. To avoid line breeding we put him over the 2020 born stud ewes which he has mated with before. This will also give us a chance to examine the consistency of exact parentage in this breed.
Two new sires were purchased from Mangapiri Downs to mate with the younger girls. Slingo (MD/256/22) and Shirley (MD/335/22) are both proud rams that showed (in our opinion) the best constitution out of the Gow’s top stock. Rounding the sires out for this season was Sonny, the ram full of self assurance from Nelson. The kind of ram that you don’t know if he wants to hug you or run over the top of you. I err on the side of caution.
This mating season was the same as the last in terms of cycles as we like the safety of it. Single sire mating (approx 50 ewes each) for 2 cycles and then the top new ram put to all ewes for the third cycle (this year it was Slingo). This system allows us to know what ram did the business while giving us a backup if a ewe was missed or a ram was a dud. This way we know if a ewe is dry the breeding mob is not the place for her.
We also had a commercial mob of ewes to consider this season. By mating the studs a month early we were able to use the stud sire rams over our mob of 200 2th ewes as well making the most of their advanced genetics. By doing this we can then start building a M/A ram mob from this offspring which we know the sires of and start moving away from all ram lamb mating in our commercial ewes. Well thats the thought process anyway…
Lambing is due to start on the 2nd of August. Lets go!
To view the rams click here