A whopping 777 Beltex have been entered for this week's breed society sale at Carlisle, with a total of 594 tups catalogued alongside 203 shearling ewes.
Most leading breeders are represented, with John Cowan's Brickrow flock, Ayr, having a raft of entries, including 10 ram lambs by leading sires including imported sire Mustang and British bred Corstane Coulter.
A highlight from Brickrow will be Brickrow Mahogany Magic, a Mustang son out of a dam which stood breed champion at the Royal Highland last year. Also entered are ET brothers Brickrow Mysterious Myth and Brickrow Mausoleum Maybe, both out of a Cookstown Hasmish daughter which is full sister to the Highland champion last year.
Allan Jackson's Headlind flock also has some classy names among its back pedigrees and his entries will also be well worth a look, with one of his shearlings, Headlind Lackey, described as the best Beltex bred at Headlind.
The MacAllister family will also be over from Northern Ireland with a trailer load, while more local breeders Gavin Shanks, Lanarkshire, and Messrs Ryder, Dumfrieshire, will doubtless also be worth a look.
But much like the Suffolk sale at Edinburgh, there is a conspicuous lack of performance recording figures in the catalogue, with none of the massive entry having any data to back up their claims. Its a sad endictment on both the way performance recording is viewed by many breeders and the breed itself that the technology available has yet to be grasped.
Commercial farmers will doubtless still take plenty of sheep home with them, but one wonders how much longer this situation can persevere.
Interesting closing comments J.
Would the same folk purchasing these Tups on 'looks' be the ones complaining about the poor returns/prices for their prime lambs per-chance? I think this may be the case.
I plan to stop in past my neighbours commercial Tup sale (on-farm) this evening (Logie Durno Charollais) so I'll share my thoughts with you all tomorrow.
I suspect they may be, I find it baffling in this day and age that some of the leading breeds can still consider producing sheep without figures. Particularly when you look at the cattle industry. With Beltex in particular renowned for their slow growth rate I would have thought they'd be the first to put out figures to help commercial men make more of their lamabs.
I realise figures aren't the ultimate selection tool, but they make a damn good place to start!
I'd be interested to hear how Willia and Carol get on tonight, it could be a tricky year for private sales, but I suspect they have a decent enough following now to achieve a sensible trade.
I totally agree.
Regards tonight considering how the sale went last year post-pirbright-leak they should be fine and you're right they do have a considerable local following and the Tups have had no hard feed!
I think I am right in saying it's the first year they have some Charollais crossed with the Beltex (or vice-versa) so that is something I'm quite intrigued by.
Strikes me as a good way to ruin a decent Charollais!!
As you'll have realised I'm a big fan of these more naturally produced sheep, the trouble is there are too many traditional shepherds out there who only want to buy the biggest tup in the pen - rather than the one which will leave the best profit.
The Beltex recording scheme finally got off the ground this year, so not long now until there are Beltex tups with figures. Part of the resistance to figures is due to the perception that tup EBVs in some breeds have more to do with the feed bag than anything else, and then there are the big hard lambs that cost a fortune to finish at weights way beyond spec. The constant high demand and premium for Beltex-sired lambs are selling points that are hard to beat. The growing demand for Beltex X tups speaks for itself. Buyers can't get enough of them!
Is it possible to bring tup lambs through a Scottish winter with no hard feed? Hmmmmm.
Hi Sheepwreck, I take your point on the growing demand for Beltex cross tups, but that's a porblem in itself, surely any terminal sire breed which has to be crossed with another to produce a decent tup is in dangerous water?
And yes there are premiums for Beltex cross lambs, but how long do those lambs take to reach a saleablee weight, a good deal longer than those by many other terminal sires in my experience - particularly a good deal longer than a Suffolk, Hampshire, Southdown or your own favoured Charollais.
I'm pleased the Beltex scheme got off the ground this year, but if that is the case why do none of the tup lambs in the Carlisle catalogue carry figures? EBVs when understood truly have absolutely nothing to do with the feed bag and all to do with breeding potential, some of the best figured sheep in many breeds actually come from those breeders who feed little or no concentrate at all - such as Peter Baber's Suffolks in Devon.
I accept there have been problems with big lambs failing to finish, but changes to the recording schemes to favour muscle over weight gain in recent years should have overcome those problems.
It should be no problem at all to bring tup lambs through a Scottish winter without hard feed provided they are the right sort of sheep, structurally sound and naturally fleshed. Sheep have been develeoped throught the centuries to eat forage crops, so let's allow them to.
Firstly - sorry if my mis-information opened a new can of worms. The Logie Durno Hybrids appear to be the Charollais Tup over a TEXEL ewe (or vice-versa). No beltex are involved i.e not the very successful cross that Auchenlay have been selling at Kelso for years now.
As far a last night goes when I arrived, once the crowd has passed, Carole Ingram estimated a 70% clearance through all the breeds / hybrids / ages and price ranges and their youngest son was able to confirm that a (Charollais shearling?) Tup in the £500 pen was bid up to £800 in £25 increments.
One thing it confirmed to me is that the sooner everyone stops over-feeding breeding stock the sooner we will advance on all fronts. I'm a pedigree cattle breeder with no knowledge of sheep but I am interested to learn how on earth we will survive with inputs prices at their current levels - my advice is to ditch intensive cereals and learn how to utilise growing grass - either directly or saving it for the winter for when we'll need it as growing cereals to keep breeding sheep/cattle going is utter madness.
agreed blue grey coo!
But from expereince of selling rams at home in wales, people will NOT look at your rams in pens unless they are fed & in good nick... until the buyer asks for this who are we to argue??
It really is a case if you can't beat them than you have to join them.
My father resisted feeding and then saw that he had to...
Well Blue Grey, that sound's like a reasonable trade for what would no doubt have been good honest sheep naturally presented.
Agreed on the points about stopping over-feeding breeding stock, the trouble is its a vicous circle. If you stop feeding while everyone else continues you lose buyers, then you are forced back to feeding again and so it all goes on. The buyers must be re-educated first and then the demand will come.
But, and this is the main thrust of my argument, once you bring EBVs into the equation you can get a true understanding of that animal's potential without the need to fall back on the feed bag is diminished rapidly.
My sale rams and tup lambs to be shearlings next year finally head for the stubble turnips tonight!
No Beltex figures this year because we've only just done 20-week scan weights. There aren't many Beltex born Dec - Feb. and the recording flocks lamb mostly in March, so unless we can negotiate some changes with Signet, it will only be shearlings with figures in future Carlisle catalogues. Beltex X lambs were topping markets in Scotland in June, so no, they're not always long-keep. Anyway, what would it do to the price if all lambs were ready at the same time - doesn't bear thinking about. I suspect that hybrid tups will be taking a bigger share of the market in future - and we'll always need Beltex tups to breed Beltex X tups. One of the many plus points of the Beltex and Beltex X is that they keep their condition through the winter without any supplementary feed - in the absence of lush Devon pastures, and ours would know a stubble turnip if it poked them in the eye!
Fair enough sheepwreck I recognise the difficulty of working within the scheme. Although as I understand it there is no need to stick exactly to 20 weeks to get accurate data, we did ours at closer to 16 to ensure we had the figures back before selling any tup lambs we might have wanted to use ourselves.
I'm not suggesting all the lambs should be fit at the same time and to be fair the main influence on that will be the lambing date, all the time we have a spread of lambing dates in the UK there is no danger of all lambs flooding the market together. Butt, what I am in favour of is lambs which grow quickly off grass or other forages.
As for lush Devon pastures I'm afraid Peter doesn't have those either, mostly just rougg ESA grazing not suitable for anything other than sheep. And like yours mine wouldn't have known a stubble turnip until last night, but I needed a break crop before putting a ley in and they fitted the bill - good for the sheep and my wallet, hopefully!