I use a variety of characteristics to evaluate our flock of Black Welsh Mountain sheep each fall. I also look at their NSIP EBVs for important traits.
Every year, I evaluate them to determine who stays, who will be for sale, and who will go to the butcher. We’ve sorted the rams, ewes, and yearlings, and now we only have the lambs left to do.
The first thing we look at is their fundamental “good sheep” characteristics: their Teeth, Toes, and Tits/Testicles. We call this the “3 T’s of Sheep.”
All sheep, even rare breeds, must function in their environment and on our farm. That means they need to be able to hold condition, raise lambs, and breed on hay and forage alone. Good teeth are critical. I look not only at the shape of the teeth, but also whether there are any missing. The most common reason we cull older ewes is due to missing teeth. Once they start losing teeth, they’re no longer able to eat enough to support themselves and their lambs. It’s best to butcher them while they still have good body condition.
Toes is shorthand for feet and legs. Again, our sheep have to be able to walk and move to get their food. I don’t want to deal with foot problems, so any sheep that require more than one hoof trim per year end up culling candidates. This is also why we cull any sheep with bad leg conformation. Rams, in particular, must be up on their back legs and have good, strong loins to be able to service the ewes.
Tits/Testicles is another way of assessing their reproductive fitness. For rams, we measure scrotal circumference. This highly correlates with the fertility and fecundity of the daughters, and it’s one of the most important selection criteria for rams. It’s also a measure of how many ewes they can serve. For the ewes, udder shape and lack of lumps and bumps is critical. We have had occasional cases of mastitis, so any ewes with udder lumps get sent to slaughter.
Once I evaluate the critical performance aspects of the sheep, I look at breed character. This is where I grade each animal against my ideal Black Welsh Mountain sheep. I look at head shape, horns (or lack thereof), body thickness, wool quality, fleece color, and so on. A good Black Welsh should look like a brick with a sturdy and thick body, well-sprung ribs, and plenty of depth for the rumen. They should not be too tall, but should be very muscular. I’m looking for a nice, medium fleece with a decent crimp that will shed snow and rain. It should be good for hand-spinning.
I want a feminine head on the ewes and a nice, masculine head on the rams. Horns on the rams should be neither too wide nor too close. In the US, most Black Welsh have massive horns. We’re a bit out of spec compared to the UK standard, so I’m working on getting the horns thinner, finer, and a bit more tightly curled. It’s a slow process, because if you get a close, tightly-curled horn that’s too thick, the sheep cannot eat, as it will interfere with its jaw. In the US, it is illegal to sell sheep whose horns have been turned with heat without a full disclosure, and some states forbid it altogether. As such, a ram must grow his natural horns in a nice, even manner. We cannot change the growth by any means and still sell them as breeding stock.
I rank our sheep on a scale of one to five for these traits, with five being best, four being good, three being average, two being poor, and one being bad. I add up the scores for each trait to give an overall number. I do use that number as one of the criteria in my selection process, but only after culling the ones for critical issues like teeth, udder lumps, and bad feet or legs.
In addition to this number, I also use the EBV calculations that we get from our NSIP recordings. EBVs are a way to estimate the breeding value of an individual animal for important traits, such as the number of lambs weaned, birth weight, weaning weight, hogget weight, wool and carcass traits, and even worm burden via fecal egg counts. We do not use all the possible EBVs in our selection process, but we do focus on maternal characteristics. For us, the cost to collect ultrasound data on carcass traits, wool micron testing, and fecal egg counts is too expensive, so we’ve only been collecting weight data on our sheep. I also collect birth, weaning, early post-weaning, late post-weaning, yearling, and adult weights. Finally, we record lambing ease, whether the ewe required assistance to lamb, and the level of assistance needed.
In most commercial breeds, EBVs are used to select for the “best” animals. What we have done is use EBVs as a tool to help us filter out the worst animals. This is a subtle but critical difference. Because we’re the only flock recording these values, the accuracies of our EBVs are not that good – there are no animals from outside our flock to compare to. If we select an animal entirely on the numbers and the accuracy is low, we could end up using a poor-quality animal for breeding. However, because we use the EBVs to select for the worst animals, it alleviates some of the risk. Even with the accuracy problems, we might inadvertently cull an average animal, but the likelihood that we’ll cull a quality one is low. That’s a much less serious problem than spreading poor genetics.
Black Welsh Mountain sheep are run as a USA Maternals breed by NSIP. This is an index that is focused on dual-purpose and maternal sheep. We’re in the same group as Polypays. An index takes the EBVs for specific traits, adds a weighting factor, and calculates a single final value for the animal. Although indexes are useful, it’s also important to look at specific trait EBVs, especially with rare breeds. It’s a better way to maximize genetic diversity.
In our selection criteria, the indexes I use are the USA Maternals and the Self-Replacing Carcass (SRC). The SRC index is the closest to the Welsh index used by UK Welsh Mountain breeders. They record their purebred sheep with Signet in the UK. I also look specifically at birth weight, maternal weaning weight, yearling weight, adult weight, and lambing ease EBVs.
We produce meat and wool, and most of our meat sheep are butchered at 14-18 months of age. In the US, we call that mutton, but the UK would call it hogget. We also butcher some sheep as lambs at around ten months or so. In an ideal world, I would want the lambs to grow to butcher size on forage alone within that time frame, but I also do not want to increase the birth weights or adult sizes of our sheep. It’s a balancing act to get fast growth, but keep birth and adult weights low enough to allay lambing problems. The final proof of our process is attained by tracking carcass weights on all slaughtered sheep, no matter the age. We have been recording our Black Welsh Flock with the NSIP since 2011.
Since then, we have increased the carcass weights on lambs by 4.35 pounds and on yearling lambs by 1.96 pounds. Our yields on carcass to retail meat cuts is typically 65%, and we sell our meat at an average of $12 per pound. Some is sold wholesale, and some is sold retail. By using the NSIP, we have increased our income by an average of $33.93 per lamb or $15.29 per yearling.
The NSIP charges a yearly flock fee based on how many animals you breed. Our yearly fee was $200 for the first 55 ewes we bred in 2014. There is also a one-time database fee for every lamb entry that stores information beyond birth weight data. This fee is $2.85 per lamb, and once you pay it, you can continue to send data on that sheep for its entire lifetime.
In 2015, we had 50 ewes produce a total of 72 live lambs. One lamb was killed by predators, so we have 71 lambs on which we will collect data. That will cost us about $202.35 for this year. Our total costs will be $5.67 for each lamb this year. Even with that cost, we are still looking at an average additional income of $28.26 for any lambs we butcher and $9.62 for yearlings. As we continue to improve our flock, I expect those figures to grow.
Fall evaluations are when I find out how well I did in selecting last year’s breeders. It’s also when I start looking at what I need for the following year. It’s a fun time for me, even though it’s a lot of work.
