Top tups take Texels forward
By Jonathan Long
BREEDING SHEEP with the aid of performance recording needn”t mean losing breed traits or characteristics as many believe, it simply needs strong judgement and a willingness to employ rigid selection criteria.
The trick is to use high index tups which also carry the other traits you”re looking for, according to Texel breeder Nick Tavernor.
“When using homebred tups I simply go down the list of lamb indexes and look at each lamb in turn until I find a lamb with good figures and all the characteristics I like, such as good feet and legs and a good back end.
“Using tups just because they have good figures can lead to problems, including a lack of conformation. Terminal sires need good back ends and shoulders.”
HOWMEBRED RAMS
To overcome the problem, Mr Tavernor mainly uses homebred tups from his Salocin flock at South Petherton, Somerset, only bringing in outside breeding when he needs an injection of fresh blood in the flock.
“I breed a more compact Dutch type of Texel, unlike most UK breeders who breed more of a French type, so the choice of rams is limited. I could use more French-type blood, but that may mean losing some of the characteristics my sheep are renowned for.”
However, while this may appear a blinkered approach, it is one which has reaped benefits for Mr Tavernor, who began breeding Texels more than 25 years ago.
“We have been steadily improving the lean index of the flock and in the 10 years to 2004 we more than doubled the index from 81 to 164,” he says.
This steady and continual improvement has been rather more dramatic in the last year, with the index jumping more than 40 points in the 2004 lamb crop. This rapid increase in index resulted in Mr Tavernor being awarded a Progressive Flock Award for making most improvement in the Texel breed.
While this is slightly exaggerated by a poor year in 2003, the key to this jump in index is clear, believes Mr Tavernor. “Using one borrowed ram lamb did the trick. In 2003, I had planned to serve ewes with an imported stock tup, but he became ill in the week before tupping. This left me with no tup to use and 60 ewes sponged and needing tupping.
“It was also one of the first years I was interested in scrapie genotyping, so I only really wanted to use ARR/ARR tups if possible.” With this in mind, he had to find a tup quickly, so on a recommendation from another breeder he contacted the Quick family in Devon to find suitable tups.
“They had plenty of ARR/ARR tup lambs to choose from. Unfortunately, these lambs were unrecorded, so I had no idea how their lambs would perform. But I picked out two and borrowed them both for that season. One lamb wouldn”t have been able to serve all the ewes.”
Having used these tups in 2003 Mr Tavernor was keen to buy one – Loosebeare Just Right – but waited to see how his lambs grew out before deciding on it.
“The benefit of this tup is that his sire was bred in a recorded flock, so while he wasn”t recorded himself, many of his relatives were. This helped, as connectivity to other animals improves the reliability of indexes,” he explains.
Following the improvement in lean index and with Just Right throwing lambs of exactly the type Mr Tavernor likes, he was used across the entire flock last autumn. “I like to use one tup across as many ewes as possible to keep to the gene pool tight and ensure lambs are of a particular type.”
And while many pedigree flocks may use creep feeds to improve lamb growth, Mr Tavernor relies solely on grazed grass. “We”ve only got 320 acres, but most of the farm is in an arable rotation, so we always have new leys to graze ewes and lambs on.
“With the quality of grass these leys provide there is no need for supplementary feeding at any time in the year,” he reckons.