What we breed for in our rams.

Rams are a very important part of a flock, as their genetic presence in your lamb crop will be greater than the ewes yearly presence. In one year, a ram will have potentially several offspring, whereas a ewe will likely have only two lambs. Now a ewe may stay longer than a certain ram on the farm, and produce more lambs in the long run, but year to year the lamb crop quality can change a lot simply by one bad or good ram.

The traits we generally look for in our rams starts with a few basic qualifications to joining our breeding program. From there, individual traits can be further encouraged to have greater fleece, or greater carcass traits, or greater dairy influence. But those traits are preferences that can be tweaked and worked towards.

The essential traits that we require a ram to start with is overall health. A sheep that lives is always priority number one. A ram must show good parasite resistance, a decent immune system to fight off viruses and Pneumonia, and in general not show susceptibility to much of anything. If the ram is struggling to mature because he is sickly, than he isn’t going to produce good lambs. So parasite resistance and respiratory health are at the top of the qualifier list for all our sheep.

We also look for easier keepers that do well on a low input system. If they need any excess attention with no good reason, we don’t want to further breed that. This could be a lack of good mineral absorption causing slower growth or poorer health. It could be them not handling the heat as well and needing a lot of care to keep them from heat stroke. It could be them needing extra hoof or horn care then is normal. Any of these we don’t want to encourage in our flock, so we wouldn’t breed a ram like this.

The next huge qualifier in our flock is personality. We do not keep ANY aggressive rams. It is ok if they are shy of us, as long as they are still handleable. But if they are gonna be mean to us or their ladies, they will find their other calling awful fast! A mean, grumpy, or pushy ram is dangerous for everyone involved. All of our rams must prove to be calm, gentle, and handleable. Some are shy and give us a wide birth, but only act submissive and never threaten to hurt anyone. That is fine. Many will gladly come near us and don’t mind being handled. BUT NEVER BE OVER FRIENDLY WITH A FRIENDLY RAM! This can cause them to get pushy and dangerous in the rut, and will ruin them.

With personality comes also the mothering abilities and traits. Rams heavily influence the mothering genetics in their daughters, so we only keep rams from top ewes that lamb unassisted and always take the best care of their lambs.

These are the musts for every ram on the farm.

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 in their daughters.

We breed for good horns whenever possible, though we give a little more wiggle room here if the horns are the only bad trait about a ram. If his are tighter we’ll give him some wide horned ewes to still make good use of all the rest of his qualities!

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.

Some of our rams 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 fellas are definitely valuable!

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 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.