Rams must be functionally effective, in other words they must have healthy reproductive organs and strong, healthy legs. Test your rams for fertility. If only a few rams are used, it is especially important that they should be fertile.
Ewes
Mating skills
- Rams must be skilled at mating.
- Use young rams with old ewes and old rams with young ewes.
- Rams must be healthy at breeding time.
- Some disease conditions such as fever (also bluetongue injections) could cause temporary infertility.
- The maximum age at which rams should be used for mating is 7 to 8 years.
- Old rams cannot follow ewes for long distances.
- Ensure that the rams are in a good condition at breeding time.
- They must not be overweight, because then they become lazy.
- If animals have to walk long distances during the breeding season, make sure that you buy rams early enough to allow them time to adapt to the environment.
- Do not release expensive, newly-bought rams into areas where there are large numbers of poisonous plants.
Ewes
- Ewes must be functionally efficient.
- A healthy udder with 2 normal, healthy teats is essential.
- Examine the teats regularly in areas where ticks occur.
- Ewes that have hard udders (as a result of inflammation or blue udder) and those with abnormally thick teats must be culled.
- Ewes must not be too old when mated.
- They must be culled after 5 to 6 lambing seasons (7 to 8 years).
- Their teeth get bad and they cannot walk long distances to find grazing.
- Ewes must be neither too fat nor too thin.
- If young ewes are too thin, they do not come into oestrus.
- Ewes must be healthy.
- Disease conditions such as fever immediately after mating could cause resorption of the foetus and abortion.
- Young ewes should be mated for the first time at 18 months.
Breeding season
- Mate the ewes so that they lamb when grazing is plentiful.
- Lambs will then have a better chance of survival.
- This also avoids having to buy expensive feed and the lambs are ready for the market at an early age.
- Limit the breeding season to 6 weeks to include 2 oestrus cycles.
- When the mating season is too long, flock management (dipping, vaccination and dosing) becomes difficult.
Pregnancy period
- Avoid underfeeding and stress.
- Animals should not be driven for long distances during the first 3 weeks of pregnancy.
- This could cause resorption of the foetus.
- Provide sufficient feed to ewes during late pregnancy (the last 6 to 8 weeks) to ensure that strong lambs with a chance for a good life expectation are born.
Lambing time
- Lambs should suckle as soon after birth as possible to take in colostrum.
- Colostrum ensures that they build up natural immunity against diseases.
- Provide proper shelter against wind and rain.
- Ewes that have lambs should not be allowed to become too thin, because the lambs will not get enough milk.
- When the ewe has a lot of milk, the lamb grows quickly and can be weaned sooner.
- This gives the ewe a chance to reach an acceptable mass before the start of the next breeding season.
- If an ewe’s condition deteriorates during lambing, she will not conceive easily during the next breeding season.
This article was written by Prof. Tertius Brand and first appeared in Farming SA.
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