You will never get far if you have poor breeding ewes for your flock members. As important as rams are, the ewes abilities in lambing and rearing their lambs are going to ultimately be the difference between your flock flourishing or failing year after year. They will be a big factor if the flock makes you money, or wastes it. If a ewe cannot raise healthy lambs, and either leaves you with dead or sickly lambs, you will always be fighting just to keep your flock going. Rams and ewes both are important to the gene pool. Perhaps a ram may make the biggest genetic changes from one year to the next, but it’s your ewes that are the true foundation to your flock. Without that solid base, everything else crumbles. Perhaps a ram makes a lamb look great, but if the ewe cannot give that lamb what it needs, you will still risk losing that extra nice looking lamb that you worked so hard to create.

Ewes are your core, your square one, and that is not something anyone should take for granted.

Traits we look for in our ewes start with the ewes ability to raise healthy twin lambs while maintaining her own health over the summer. If she is unable to handle this, she and her lambs will fail, and sheep that live is always goal number one! The ewe herself will need to have good parasite resistance, a good immune system especially against things like Pneumonia, and be able to maintain a reasonable wait even while nursing a large set of twins. There are factors like pasture quality that affects this, but the hardier the ewe the better for a low input system that we strive for.

We are going to be looking for ewes that absorb their available nutrients and minerals well, and make good use of the nutrition they are given, and passes that nutrition also to her lambs. We don’t mind some ewes that give all to their babies as long as they themselves are capable of quickly recovering when lambs are weaned and they aren’t sickly during the summer because of it. We love big babies, but we also love healthy ewes!

Hand in hand with all this we really watch heavily for the natural maternal instincts of the mother, and her dairy qualities. You can have a lamb with fast growth and a meaty build in his genetics, but if mom can’t give enough milk and rich enough milk, those genetics are going to be greatly challenged to meat their full potential. A ewe must be an easy lamber with minimal help needed if any. She must be a natural mother that properly accepts and cares for her lambs, and she must have the proper milk supply for us to keep her as a breeder. Without these traits, she and her lambs will struggle. If a mother does not show these necessary traits, we will not keep any rams from her, though if its a valuable line we might try a daughter to see if the father made any improvements on these traits.

After these first qualifiers are met we may choose to keep or not keep a ewe based on her other qualities.

Personalities are important in ewes for easy handling, and a cranky ewe can be dangerous as well. We try to look for friendlier ewes, but if we have a ewe that is an awesome mom but not as easy to handle we may keep her on as long as she isn’t too out of control. But we will likely move her on if she gives us an easier to handle daughter that kept her good mothering traits!

We also breed for good conformation. This means a chunky build that is smooth in its connections. If at all possible we want the straightest backlines we can get, with a deep body that is muscly for good meat production. We want smooth shoulders, and a round rump with a good loin span. Length is also important for easier lambing as the shorter bodied ewes may have more problems with Dystocia.

We breed for good horns whenever possible, though we give more wiggle room here then most traits as it is a bit more fixable later than most traits, and a good mother is far more important to us. If a ewe has tighter horns we will simply breed her to a wider horned ram.

Their feet need to be nicely shaped without excessive growth.

Good fertility is also important, as we want our ewes settled in a timely manner and no ewes staying open, and we want to see twins over singles. We personally aren’t trying to breed triplets here just because twins are so much easier on the ewe, lambs and farmer. Triplets are doable and we do have some ewes that triplet, but it’s not something we are trying to breed more heavily into the flock.

Some of our ewes will bend more towards fiber refinement, or meat, or extra dairy qualities, with a few being able to truly be triple purpose and bring all three traits to the genetic table. These ewe are definitely valuable and will likely stay on the farm to continue these traits.

In fiber, we are looking for softer, yet durable wool good for use in fiber projects such as spinning, or felting.

For meat we are looking for faster growth, good hanging weights by 6 months of age, and in general a more chunky build all around.

Milk traits really are more important than most realize. You don’t have to personally use the milk to appreciate the dairy quality of a sheep. The milk along with mothering traits is the key to large, healthy sheep that produce well and get to the sizes you want. Poor dairy leaves lambs smaller, sometimes stunted, and more susceptible to illness. Dairy is increasingly important to us in the flock, choosing dairy and meat traits over wool most times.