How often do we hear the saying “the ram is 50% of the flock”? Annually, when breeding season is fast approaching.

Yet, because we may only have a handful of rams, they are normally kept out of the way for most of the year. We normally go through our rams first when they are taken away from the ewes at the end of the breeding season. Any ram with teeth issues is sold immediately, regardless of condition – €50 is better than having to give the knackery €20 for him when he dies after Christmas. Any rams that have lost condition but are fit for a few more years’ work are put to the best grass available at this stage. The rams on this farm do not get meal at any stage.

These past few years, we have given the rams a UK-made feed bucket for the winter. It is not really a mineral lick as such, but it is specifically designed for rams as their breeding equipment can be damaged by too much of certain minerals.

Mix of breeds

There are a mix of rams here: Texel, Charollais, Lleyn, Belclare, Suffolk and a “chartex”.

The “chartex” is just a really smart lamb by a purebred Charollais ram out of a purebred Texel ewe – an experiment.

All our rams have different jobs here; some to breed replacements, some just to breed factory lambs and some for easy lambing on hoggets and ewe lambs.

We normally try to buy in what rams we need as early in the summer as we can. It is important that a ram gets time to settle on your farm and readjust to the local diet, especially if he has been pumped up for the show and sale rings. We fell foul to a few of those rams over the years and they ended up in the knackery.

There are lots of issues and theories on the overfeeding of rams. From talking to many sheep farmers and vets alike, it is a huge issue on commercial Irish sheep farms.

Ram lamb rather than hogget

On this farm, we like to purchase a ram lamb over a hogget ram for different reasons. The main one is that if a ram is a good lamb in July or August, it is like the early weanling sale: the best performers are normally out first.

Luckily, in the past few years, we have found breeders of rams who in their own words “are not aiming for rosettes”. One breeder told me that all he wants is for farmers to come back to him happy to buy more of his stock in the knowledge they will last the pace.

Our best ram, a Charollais, was bought in 2008. Unfortunately, this will be his last season. He has never lost one kilogramme of flesh since we bought him. I wish I could say the same for all the rams we bought. We have since bought other rams off his breeder and they have performed equally as well.

We keep three or four purebred Texel ewes and if any of their ram lambs turn out good, we keep them. They are just run with the main flock.

Health check

Our rams had another check-up about three weeks ago. We just examined feet and teeth etc to see that they are generally in good order. We did have an issue a few years ago with an infertile ram we put to 40 ewes, all of which were empty at scanning.

It was maybe our fault that we did not put a second ram with him, but then he may still well be here three years later. He was fertility-tested the following summer and had a zero sperm count.

Our rams are now on good grass in the run-up to the start of their happy time.

Read more

Focus: Sheep breeding supplement

Sheep management: purchasing straw, a ram NCT, and the Sheep Ireland ram sale