Doubling the Lambing

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 45, 4 February 1928, Page 12

Doubling the Lambing

Gould Twins be Made Profitable?

Suggestions For Experimental F ocks

(By

“Sundowner.”)

(Written for the “Tribune”—All Righto Reserved.)

APART from improvement in eon- —*• stitution, conformation, wool, weight and quality, and early maturity in our sheep, there is a direction in which sheep farmers could considerably increase their profits, and that is by increasing the prolificacy of their ewes. WHY NOT TWINS THE RULE? Without any special selection, provided the sheep have abundant feed, the average ewe will provide enough milk to raise two healthy lambs at once, and as the tendency to bearing twins is a characteristic which is transmitted through hereditary, tlsere appears to be no reason why it should not lie and could not be easily encouraged. Being among the comparatively short-lived animals, the sheep should be more prolific than it actually it in domestication, for in a wild or feral state it frequently rears from one to four lambs each year. WILD SHEEP BREED TWICE When breeding is not controlled by man as with wild sheep, the ewe appears to come in season at the end of February and again at the end of August, when the lamb at toot is about a month old. At any rate the writer has seen wild ewes in February with newly-born lambs at foot while they were accompanied also by another lamb or hogget apparently about six months old. As many as four lambs—two lots of twins with about six months between them—can often be seen following a single wild ewe and all appear to grow into healthy animals and of normal sue, as wild sheep go, Though in domestication two crops of lambs per year could certainly not be recommended on account of the drain on the ewe all the year round, and consequent loss in wool-growth, there seems to be no valid reason why we should not especially prize and cultivate ewes which produce twins once a year. EXPERIMENTS IN BREEDING TWINS. The experiment has frequently been tried on a small scale when mothers of twin lambs have been selected from the flock and mated with a ram, one of twin lambs. Ewes which have once born twin lambs frequently do so in subsequent years, while their female progeny, if sired by a ram, himself a twin, should ’inherit a very strong tendency to give birth to twins. In one instance in Marlborough a farmer who interested himself in raising his percentages of lambs by this means, starting with a flock of fifty good flock ewes which bore twin lambs, is reported, in the course of a few seasons to have reared from them a flock producing an average annual percentage of one hundred and seventy-five. These twin lambs, with the exception of a few of those born of two tooth ewes, appeared to make equally rapid growth and to fatten as well as single lambs.

In some instances, but not frequently, favouritism appeared to be shown by the ewe, aud where this occurred the neglected lamb was invariably so stunted as to be almost worthless. Investigation proved that in such cases the ewe had not more than enough milk to satiety one lamb, and if the maternal neglect was noticed sufficiently early the lamb was “adopted” to a foster ewe or hand reared. POINTS TO CONSIDER. Provided the twin-bearing mothers originally selected were of good type, and not selected solely tor their prolific tendency, and the twin ram used was similarly good, there would seem to be no reason why this characteristic could not be developed to the farmer’s advantage. It would be necessary, of course, as the flock grew in size, to cull out those ewes which had not a sufficient supply ot milk to rear two healthy lambs. There is no doubt that elsction of this kind would ultimately produce a flock of ewes with ample milk for twins, just as similar '"lection has produced a like effect amongst dairy cows. Some breeds of sheep are already noted for their prolificacy and no doubt this characteristic is thus predominant because it was valued and cultivated in their homeland. However, any breed can be developed along these lines with little trouble and reasonable certainty of success in attaining the objective of high percentage larabings. As the lamb is such a big factor in determining the prefit that can be made in New Zealand farming it can easily be seen that the man who can rear 150 per cent, of healthy lambs would be fitly per cent better off than the. farmer with the usual percentage of 75 to 80. TWIN RAM DIFFICULTY. The great difficulty would, .of course, be to get rams of sufficiently good quality and of the right type which yet inherited from their dams, to pass on to their daughters, the quality of prolificacy. It would be simple enough if the flock were a stud and the breeder a mau who thoroughly understood inbreeding, but for the average farmer the risk of in-breeding would be too great, and in any case few small farmers keep stud sheep. Because of this difficulty it would probably only be possible to use a twin ram when one chanced to be procurable, relying at other times solely on the ewe to transmit the characteristic, A WORTH-WHILE EXPERIMENT. There are no doubt many obstacles and pitfalls in the way of increasing lambing percentages by this method and still maintaining the quality ot the flock, but in an experimental way it should be well worth the farmer’s while to see if he can thus increase the return from his farm.