Recently our blog posts have been focused on topics surrounding adding new breeding stock to your flock. So today we thought we’d touch on the related subject of terminal sires. Terminal sires can be very useful depending on what your breeding goals are. However, they are something that a lot of people may not be familiar with.
So just what is a terminal sire? A terminal sire is a ram that is used to breed offspring that won’t be bred. As in all of his lambs are intended to go into the freezer. You aren’t going to save and breed any of them. You are typically using a ram of a different breed that has complementary desirable traits. These traits are usually carcass quality, growth and survival traits. His one job is to create superior lambs for market. He should improve your bottom line if you are marketing meat. However, he won’t create offspring that is desirable to breed into your flock.
Sheep breeds can be categorized into maternal and non-maternal breeds.
Maternal breeds tend to be smaller, less meaty sheep who have excellent mothering skills and prolificacy traits. They are efficient and hardworking. Non-maternal breeds tend to be larger, meatier animals, with excellent carcass quality and growth traits. But they might be prone to having a single lamb or not producing enough milk, or just being poor mothers. Additionally due to their large size they cost more to feed and maintain.
When you cross a terminal sire over a maternal breed you can have the best of both worlds so to speak. For example, let’s say you run a flock of Katahdins, who are a maternal breed. They are a medium sized sheep that performs efficiently on a forage-based diet. They are also low maintenance, parasite resistant and excel at rearing lambs. However, when compared to a Texel, Suffolk or Hampshire sheep, it becomes obvious that they are lacking in carcass quality and size/growth.
We could take a Texel ram and cross it over our Katahdin flock, and the offspring will benefit from hybrid vigor.
They will also have improved growth rates and carcass qualities because they are half Texel. This means that your lambs should command a higher price at market netting you more income. You get this market quality improvement without the increased expense or drawbacks of having an entire flock of Texel sheep. Your lambs will be meatier and reach market weight faster than pure Katahdins. Because they are not staying on your farm very long you won’t have to worry about maintenance downsides like shearing.
Keep in mind that you will also need to produce replacement ewes. If you are focusing on meat and choose to use a terminal sire, you breed the majority of your ewes to your terminal sire. Select your best ewes to breed to the best maternal ram you can find (one who meets your breeding goals) to produce your replacement ewe lambs. This way you are maximizing the market value of your lambs while also simultaneously improving the quality of your ewe flock.
Now I know that many people might be appalled by the idea of making ‘mutt’ sheep.
This country as a whole has an obsession with papers and pure bred everything. However, as the saying goes ‘you can’t eat papers’. Don’t be afraid to make quality crossbred lambs for market. Many profitable commercial meat flocks are an amalgamation of many breeds of sheep. This is also true of some of the newer sheep breeds such as the Rideau Arcott.
Why? Because different breeds of sheep excel at different traits. No breed excels at everything. Also breeds that have closed herd books tend to suffer from genetic bottlenecks. Crossbreeding creates hybrid vigor and produces offspring that are healthier and better performing. We create a high-performance commercial flock to meet our specific environment and market demands by mixing and matching.
So maybe we add some Finn for prolificacy, some East Friesian for milk production, some Suffolk for size, some Katahdin for parasite resistance, etc. Then, we select the ewes that perform best for us and seek out rams that add traits we would still like to improve. All the breeds available today are a result of doing this process repeatedly in different places around the world.
We hope this gives you some food for thought as you work to maximize you flocks performance and your profit. Sometimes we forget this, but keep in mind that your rams are your single most important investment. The breed doesn’t matter most, performance does. Your ram will be the majority of the genetics in your flock within a few generations. Don’t let a crappy ram stand in the way of your success!
Next time we will be discussing a little bit about the National Sheep Improvement Program (NSIP) and how we can use it to improve our flock. If you don’t want to miss out on that article, please sign up for our newsletter to have it delivered to your inbox!
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