Damn I just deleted my post of about 2 pages. Lets see if I can retype it out
Back in the day, I know that there were plenty of problems associated with linebreeding and genetic regression, I know this because Tom Harris (my mentor, I'm only 23) used to ship everything from the failing rams when I was displeased with the lamb crop- regardless of the quality of the upper end lambs. These sheep have been linebred for a number of years, I would say atleat 50. Have I had any problems arise- not really... I had a parrot mouth lamb born in 08, but her sire was a 100% outcross ram. Every year, I get an inverted eyelid, or 2... but almost all the time, they are out of mostly outcrossed lines- go figure. I did have one ewe family that I started in 04 with a Wiinning Ways ewe, that would give me 2 parrot mouths and specked ears every year- out of 4 or 5 ewes. As you would guess, I shipped the entire family. Now the only ewe on the place, that doesn't have my eartags, is a monkey mouth carrier. She was the payment ewe from 2007. She has not bred this fault on seriously yet, As long as i keep her daughters, i find it a challege to bred that out of them, if I have to, I can ship the whole family if it gets out of control. To be honest, I haven't sold a ewe lamb to the sale barn in 5 years, and except this year- I had only sold 5 ram lambs as well (3 QQ's, and two that I just plain got tired of feeding. As you would guess the next week, I would have a buyer call... Last year, I only had 14 ewe lambs out of 70 lambs born- so I had plenty of the undesirable sex around. I did start a really nice market through the local Muslim population at the university. Although they aren't paying quite market price right now, they paid plenty over this summer. I just sold them quite a few of our show bucks for the year, one of which was a fall yearling who had shot his teeth, which made him pretty well worthless. They paid 1.25, which is almost double market price, and more than purebred breeders would pay. I sold my last QQ show ram lamb, and two old bucks to market the other day and got 1.56 for the lamb, and .70 for the two old bucks. This is pretty well more money than most purebred breeders are wanting to pay for breeding stock, as the purebred market is way down. As a result, I bred for added thickness, muscle, and fleshing ease for the 2011 lamb crop, and likely for 2012 as well... I plan to focus our program more towards the commercial side of things, instead of focusing on making show sheep from now on.
just as a side note, I recently attended the Illini Bred Ewe Sale, which is a purebred seedstock sale, that has been spirlling downward for a couple of years. I am out of butcher lambs at home, and have an order for 2 more from the muslims. I went to the sale in hunt of cheap ewe lambs to take home and butcher. Floor price was set at $200. I was not the only person there with that intent. The local lamb buyer was there, he purchased every ewe lamb that sold for floor price to take home and market, and he purchased every bred ewe for less than $250. The bred ewes, he will lamb out within the next month or two, and then send the trio to market-- bringing in quite a profit. (This is a great idea, if I had the money, or room, I would do the same) I think he purchased about 15 sheep total- from a purebred sale to basically butcher. Lukily for me, he left when the last two sheep were about to enter the ring... I got my two butcher lambs. Sale was NOT very good needless to say. Now you know why I'm gearing to sell to market next spring, instead of piddeling with the purebred breeders who won't spend enough cash to break even.
I have two outcross ewe families currently, that are for creating show and sale sheep. Logically, this is due to the hybrid vigor effect. This also works two fold- not just do I create show sheep, but I also create sale winning stock, that although they don't have the prepotent breeding consistancy capabilities that my linebred ewes have-- but if I sell them to other people, then those other people don't have any consistancy anyways. So this works both ways- I win the sale, they purchase a phenomimal sheep. I have been thinking during the last year or so, about incorperating some of my original bloodlines back into my flock for experiements, much like many cattleman on here. I think that those older stuff has a place in today's marketplace (I didn't have any of these sheep left, but did have a few stashed away in satelight flocks). This actually worked out quite well, as this summer a family from MO that had been purchasing ewe lambs from us since about 03 decided to sell the sheep since their youngest was headed off to college in the fall. We purchased their flock, which was 6 brood ewes, and 5 or 6 ewe lambs. 4 of the brood ewes traced back to our stuff, and all the ewe lamb did as well. So this was exactly what I had been thinking about. It will be interesting to see how these sheep work out with my new pedigress. We didn't pay much for these sheep, but i told the guy that when his (grandkids) want to start with sheep, 2 females and a stud ram would be waiting free of charge.
