Evaluating Lambs

We had 81 lambs this year. I'd like to keep...well I'd like to keep a lot but realistically I should keep only about five. In fact since the JSBA AGM is here in August I should allow myself enough space to buy/trade from other people. So I have to narrow down my choices. I also have to figure out which lambs will be sold to other breeders and which may go to market. It would be nice to wait until they are all six months old or more to evaluate them but that is not realistic either. I am weaning the oldest lambs now and buyers want to take them home. (And I need to get them away from here because they are getting bigger and eating more.)

I take lots of photos of lambs as they grow to put on the Sheep for Sale part of the website, but sometimes I need to gather the whole batch to be able to make real comparisons. I did this about a month ago.           First I sort and start narrowing down choices. This is two-horn rams.           More two-horn rams.           Four-horn rams (except for the one I liked best who broke his horn this morning and I put him out so he would hopefully not keep knocking it on others). I bred to two two-horn rams and one four-horn ram last year. There are more two horn lambs than four. Some ram lambs are missing from these groups because I had already castrated those that I knew right away would not be candidates for registration (too much or too little color or horns that were too close). Time to narrow these into groups.         These are rams who will be on the cull list. It doesn't take much for a ram to be moved to that list. In this case two of these lambs (on the right) have wide spacing between the upper and lower horns. That seems like it would be a good thing, but usually those upper horns tip forward and sometimes there are other issues with them. I'll report back with more photos as they keep growing. The lamb facing the photo on the left doesn't have enough spacing between horns. His right side horns are already touching at the base leaving no room for growth. The other two both have a lot of freckling, although it's hard to see without parting the fleece and one is scrawny.

         Three of the potential 4-horn breeding rams. Nice horn spacing and shape so far. No sign of freckling. Color % OK. Nice looking fleeces. Britch wool not too high on back leg.              Out of two pens of ram lambs I pulled these four out as potential at this point. That is mostly due to the wide horn growth. There may be others in the pens but I won't guarantee the horn spread yet. Of course, they all have to meet the other criteria mentioned above as well.           Here they are from the rear.           Another from the front showing the ram with the best horn spread so far.

On to the ewe lambs.            These are the 4-horn ewes. I will be less picky about the ewe lambs than the rams. The breed standard isn't so stringent and each ewe doesn't play as large a part in the flock as the ram. Keeping a variety of ewe lambs is a good way to maintain some genetic diversity (although that is a good reason to buy some lambs from other people in August).             The 2-horn ewe lambs.       Another view of the pen on the right. Notice the two lambs (sisters) in the upper left corner. Compare their horn growth to the others. All these lambs are about the same age. Those two are showing minimal horn growth compared to the rest. I don't know if that is temporary and their horns will be just fine when they are mature or if those are scurs. This is another reason to look at the lambs in a group. All of the rest of these lambs look fine to me so it will be hard to narrow this down to only a few to keep.            These are some of my 4-horn choices. Preliminary selection is based on wool and lack of freckling in the lamb and the dam.              The same group from the rear.  I don't fault the sheep for their rear leg position, but from this photo it would be the lamb on the left that I'd take to a show.            Two horn lambs that I like.          From the rear.

Uh oh.  I have selected a few more than my original five or fewer. There will be more selection work ahead.