Structural soundness with Longevity, Fertility, vigour, growth and conformation… a Lleyn can give it all

Established in Autumn 2000, the long term objectives for the flock, for ease of management, especially at birth, were tested sooner than expected with the foot and mouth restrictions in early 2001. This meant that the newly established flock had to lamb outdoors away from the farm with a daily visit the only attention given to those original ewes. The last of the original ewes (1999 born) was sold last autumn – and a number of the 2001 born lambs are still in the flock.

2009 lambing was again a sound test for management of the flock. Due to work commitments neither Rhys or Robin Davies could be around much around lambing. All the ewes were lambed outside and it has proved to be a very successful lambing season. Most of our time at lambing with the ewes was spent on recording the lambs.

Lambs must have plenty of ‘get up and go’ about them, and although we have always found the breed to be excellent in this area, we are now finding ones that are even faster than the average ones onto their feet.

We do pregnancy scan the flock and split them into two groups, where the singles are moved to the poorest pasture and the twins and multiples are left on the better fodder with supplementary feed offered over the last 3 weeks before lambing.

Longevity with sound structural soundness are the other traits that we select for and in addition to these traits we have now been performance recording the flock with Signet for 4 years.

Having used home bred rams and AI as a member of the Llywio Lleyn Breeding group we are now seeing the benefit of the additional effort through recording coming through the flock.

Our senior stock ram 1167:F149, which was born as a single to a ewe lamb in 2005 is having a tremendous affect on our flock. He was the 2^nd highest stocksire in the breed in 2008 with an index of 308 (accuracy 93%) based on the carcase + breeding Index.

Another previous stock sire was 1167:06483 was used as a group reference sire in 2007/8. Although his sons in other flocks have been certified Myomax Gold status, he wasn’t tested, but he still has one of the highest muscle score in the breed. Semen from this ram is still available with us and we would be willing to sell some. His dam (Z41) is still in the flock (Born 2001) and we expect that she will be able to give us a further years service, already having produced a number of daughters and rams that are breeding well.

Other ewes that are not reaching the necessary standards are not so lucky, and a heavier cull policy has been exercised over the last 2 years and will contine, eve if it means the flock reduces in umber in the short term.

Please remember to think of the 3 ‘T’s when considering buying our sheep – Teeth, Teats and toes – if any of these are not right, the sheep are not right for our or your flock.

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