Last year we spent some time discussing topics like selecting breeding stock and using terminal sires to make your flock more productive and profitable. Today we are going to be discussing another important part of improving your flock: culling. Culling is something that makes many people uncomfortable, and for good reason. Its not a pleasant thing to do. Nonetheless culling is an essential part of breeding quality livestock.
Culling doesn’t always have to mean processing an animal, sometimes it can mean selling. However, for the most part, it should probably mean freezer camp. Otherwise, you are just passing your problems off onto some other unsuspecting person. When you are able to start looking for reasons to cull your animals rather than excuses to keep them, you will make more rapid progress forward with your breeding goals.
While culling is an unpleasant task, you should not feel bad about using under performing animals to feed your family.
Mother Nature has no qualms about culling under performing and unlucky animals. She typically does so in extremely unpleasant or gruesome ways. Our domestic stock on the other hand is exchanging an endless supply of feed, shelter, medical care, and protection from predators for one very bad day. If you process your own animals on your farm, most likely, their very bad day will be over before they even know its a bad day. It is a much more pleasant existence and ending than being torn apart by wolves or staving to death.
So how do we know what animals to cull?
Firstly, culling decisions should be made based upon animal performance data. Not emotions. The more data you keep on your flock the easier it is to make good culling decisions. However, the quick down and dirty way to decide is to ask yourself “Would I want a whole flock of this animal?”. If you wouldn’t then they should probably be a potential cull. And, you definitely should not keep offspring from them.
To give you some ideas of the sorts of things you should think about, here are some specific reasons we feel an animal should be considered for culling. This list isn’t all inclusive, but it is a starting point if you are new to the concept of selecting animals to keep or cull.
Reproduction failure of any kind is top of the list.
Small ruminants that don’t get bred and produce live lambs/kids to weaning aren’t profitable. Cull animals that fail to get bred, or those that get bred late compared to everyone else. Get rid of ewes that have lambing difficulties, those that are bad mothers, etc. Your ewes should be capable of getting bred and producing a weaned lamb without any help or interference from you. They should NOT need assistance lambing. The should NOT need to be forced to allow their lambs to nurse. If an ewe isn’t reliably producing viable offspring and making your job easy. Cull her! Replace her with a ewe that is working hard for you.
You should also cull ewes with bad udders, even if they do the rest of breeding and lambing ok. Things like poor confirmation, insufficient milk and mastitis are all excellent reasons to cull. These things are all heritable. Ewes with bad udders are likely to lose lambs to starvation. Chronic mastitis is contagious and can be passed to ewe lambs from their dam, and also to other ewes in the flock. If your ewe doesn’t have enough milk to feed her lambs, that bottle lamb is a liability, and likely won’t have enough milk either. The disease OPP can show up as udders without milk. Cull your problems so they don’t spread.
Cull ewes who are bad mothers.
Your ewes should be highly maternal and not need assistance feeding or raising lambs. If they are not, they are likely to lose lambs or to wean inferior lambs. It’s heritable. Don’t keep ewes or offspring from those who are bad mothers. Bad mothers make more bad mothers. Keep ewes who you 100% trust to lamb on their own completely unsupervised at 2am. They’re the ones who are profitable. They are the ones who allow you to sleep at night.
Cull animals with poor growth and performance.
Keep lambs that have the best growth rates. Cull ewes that consistently produce underperforming offspring. You should also cull animals that fail to maintain weight. If the majority of your animals are in excellent body condition, and a few aren’t despite eating the same diet all other variables being equal. Cull them. Because again, these traits are highly heritable. It doesn’t matter what the lack of thriftiness is due to, you don’t want it.
There is a right way and a wrong way to determine animal performance.
You cannot directly compare a singleton to a triplet, or the performance of a ewe lamb to the performance of a 3-year old ewe. Why? Because that singleton is going to look the biggest and best lamb almost every time, however it is typically from an underperforming ewe! An ewe that produced and weaned triplets is working far harder for you (and will likely be much thinner) than that lazy fat ewe feeding a single lamb.
Lambs should be evaluated using adjustment factors. They can be found online. Ewes should be evaluated based upon the pounds of lambs weaned as a percentage of her body weight. This allows you to look at both lamb and ewe performance fairly. That way you are not inadvertently selecting for underperforming ewes based on physical appearance. This is a topic we will delve deeper into in a future article.
Another reason you should consider an animal for culling is poor confirmation (and health issues).
A poorly shaped animal is going to have trouble being functional. For example, sheep with improperly lined up jaws will not be able to eat efficiently. Very narrow animals may have trouble lambing and will not be able to carry a good udder. Crooked legs may hinder mobility. Your confirmation doesn’t have to be show-ring perfect, but it does need to meet a minimum threshold of functional. If it doesn’t, don’t breed it.
Along with that, if you have animals who have repeated health issues. Get rid of them. All they’re doing is costing you time, stress, and money. Chronically sore feet are a valid reason to cull. So is repeated bouts of pneumonia. Or an animal that keeps getting eye infections. If an animal is causing problems and they’re not something you’d want every animal in your flock to have. Cull them.
One of the biggest health issues every producer will face are parasites. They are something you absolutely can and should cull for. Rams in particular should not be parasite magnets. About 20% of your animals carry 80% of your parasite burden, and are shedding 80% of the parasites on your pastures. Get rid of animals that consistently require extra deworming. You and your entire flock will benefit. Besides, animals that are constantly trying to die on you aren’t going to be productive or profitable anyways. Those with consistently poor FAMACHA scores should be culled.
Sometimes culling is about economics and management not flaws.
Everyone has a limited amount of space for keeping animals. Maybe you need to downsize for a bad winter or a drought. In that scenario, keep the animals with your best genetics and cull the rest. Rebuild your flock off those superior genetics later. Bear in mind, your youngest animals should have your best genetics.
Along with this, at some point it will make sense to cull older animals for no other reason than due to their age they are no longer competitive. These animals may have been your best performers a few years ago. However, due to age or the increased performance of your younger animals they have been eclipsed. It is ok to cull them without feeling guilty. Evaluate the performance of older animals to determine whether you are better off culling them to make space in your flock for younger animals.
The last reason we want to touch on is temperament and behavior.
This is one that you absolutely should cull for. Unfortunately, it is also something that most people don’t cull for until it comes back to bite them in the butt. For some reason, temperament is something that a lot of people feel like they shouldn’t cull for. However, you absolutely should!
We firmly believe that life is too short to keep wild, mean or dangerous animals around. Temperament is very heritable, and one bad animal has the ability to set the tone for your entire flock. It doesn’t matter how many other positive traits an animal has going for it. If its temperament is terrible do the world a service and send that animal to freezer camp. A ram can put you in the hospital in the blink of an eye. Don’t keep one who is constantly threatening to do so.
You should also cull for bad behavior aka the troublemakers. If you have a sheep that will not respect your fence and is repeatedly a problem, get rid of them now! They will teach the other animals to behave poorly. Animals that are overly wild or aggressive or harmful to other animals should also go. If an animal is costing you extra time and labor expense due to behavior, they are going to negatively impact your bottom line and stress level long term. They aren’t worth the headache.
The bottom line – to make progress on your breeding goals, be purposely ruthless with your culling.
Ask yourself if you’d want to clone this animal or not. Stop looking for excuses to keep an animal and start looking for reasons to cull. It is just as ok to cull ewes as rams. They all make delicious additions to your table, and are fulfilling their purpose, and you don’t have to feel guilty about using them to feed your family.
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