# Cross breeding sheep for meat?



## lalabugs (Sep 11, 2016)

My sister purchased two Corriedale Ewes. She's looking into purchasing a ram. She wants to cross the ewes with something to get a good meat lamb. 

What breed of sheep would you recommend to cross with the Corriedale to get a good meat lamb?


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## TAH (Sep 11, 2016)

How much land does she have how big does she want these sheep to be at butcher time?


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## lalabugs (Sep 11, 2016)

She has 40 acres. The more meat the better.


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## Bossroo (Sep 11, 2016)

lalabugs said:


> My sister purchased two Corriedale Ewes. She's looking into purchasing a ram. She wants to cross the ewes with something to get a good meat lamb.
> .
> What breed of sheep would you recommend to cross with the Corriedale to get a good meat lamb?


In the hayday of the US market lamb industry... it was based on Ramboulett ewe bred to Suffolk ram. The Hampshire ram was also very popular, however, due to it's wide shoulder structure many ewes had difficulty in giving birth , so assistance was often required so many breeders turned to the Suffolk. Followed by the Corriedale ewe bred to Suffolk ram.  I used of own hundreds of these ewes bred to Suffolk ram for a very nice market lamb.  In today's marketplace , your sister would be very well served with this cross.  However, there is a new kid on the block,  that is the Dorper ram ( google Dorper sheep to get the full story of the breed )  which in todays' sales marketplace, as well as meat taste competitions compete very favorably and often outperform  the Suffolk .


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## TAH (Sep 11, 2016)

Bossroo said:


> In the hayday of the US market lamb industry... it was based on Ramboulett ewe bred to Suffolk ram. The Hampshire ram was also very popular, however, due to it's wide shoulder structure many ewes had difficulty in giving birth , so assistance was often required so many breeders turned to the Suffolk. Followed by the Corriedale ewe bred to Suffolk ram.  I used of own hundreds of these ewes bred to Suffolk ram for a very nice market lamb.  In today's marketplace , your sister would be very well served with this cross.  However, there is a new kid on the block,  that is the Dorper ram ( google Dorper sheep to get the full story of the breed )  which in todays' sales marketplace, as well as meat taste competitions compete very favorably and often outperform  the Suffolk .


WOW...I would of never been able to explain it that well.


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## lalabugs (Sep 11, 2016)

Thank you so much for the information. I gave all of it to my sister. She'll be looking in her area for one of the breeds you suggested. Thank you so much.


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## lalabugs (Sep 21, 2016)

What do you think about getting a Barbados ram?


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## Bossroo (Sep 22, 2016)

Using a Barbados ram is breeding backwards if your goal is to produce a marketable meat animal.


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## farmerjan (Sep 22, 2016)

Bossroo said:


> Using a Barbados ram is breeding backwards if your goal is to produce a marketable meat animal.


Have to agree with the "breeding backwards" by using a barbados.  Their biggest plus is they are a hair breed.  The dorper would be the best for just getting more meat and the lambs are not supposed to be that big at birth.  The suffolks today are being bred to be too lean and streamlined in my opinion.  Everyone is into this lean thing.  We used to have some hamps, and the old style horned dorsets which weren't real big and tall, but had a good amount of meat on the compact body.   One of the reasons we went with the texas dalls, we liked the horns and neither one of us is a big lamb eater.  They are also very good mothers, and not like the "typical sheep" that is looking for a way to die when they are born.  But they are a semi wild breed of sheep and not for the small homesteader type that wants a few sheep on their farm.  The ewes can be fairly friendly, but  most are not and the rams can hurt you when being handled.  
Dorpers are a hair breed so no shearing, but if she wants wool for anything that will kill that idea.


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## lalabugs (Sep 23, 2016)

Thank you! I will let her know what you all have said.


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## cjc (Sep 23, 2016)

Around here the most common sheep breed for meat is Sufflock. That's all we have ever raised so I don't know what's better!


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## lalabugs (Sep 23, 2016)

I let her know what you all said. She is going to keep her eye out for Dorper in her area. Her girls are acting in heat, she's hoping that she can find one soon.


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## The Old Ram-Australia (Oct 12, 2016)

G'day Bossroo,that is such 'sound advice" for that lady.The Corriedale is a dual purpose breed down here.The wool is well suited to hand-spinners,we used to breed naturally colored ones years ago.If the wool was the 'go',you could use a pure Corrie to increase ewe numbers and mate the progeny to a meat ram.What do you think Bossroo? With 40 acres she should be able to manage a nice small flock....T.O.R.


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## misfitmorgan (Oct 12, 2016)

Ditto on the Dorper or Suffolk suggestions. We bred pure suffolk, and suffolk/polypay as well as one of our rams being Suffolk with 1/8 hampshire.  I will say if you go with a dorper vs suffolk, dorper are overall smaller in size by 20-130lbs. Dorper and Rambouillet are all small breed sheep while New Hampshire and Suffolk are large breed sheep. If your friend is wanting market lambs corridale is a slow growth sheep for market lambs, this is the expected growth rate for several breeds used for meat typically.

Fastest to slowest growth
_To reach 110lbs
Min. Market weight typically
        is 100lbs in the US_

122-138 days - Suffolk
                         New Hampshire

138-157 days - Dorper
                         Dorset
                         Columbia
                         Oxford
                         Shropshire
                         Texel

157-183 days Corridale
                       Polypay
                       Rambouillet
                       Southdown
                       Targhee

Your friend has quite a bit of research to do and just taking whatever breeds we suggest may not be the right choice for them.

Besides size of the adult sheep, you have to look at birth size/weight, growth rate, wool or hair, maintenance requirements, special needs, hardiness to your climate, ability to thrive on your land type, and if there is a profit concern you need to look at how well those (specific cross) market lambs sell and at what price.

There are also a few bonus things as well such as the Corridale are 100% naturally polled does your friend want to stay with polled for the benefits of no horn burning and no need to buy a burning iron? Rambouillet and Dorset can be polled or horned. Some breeds are more likely to throw twins/triplets then others, they may or may not require bottle feeding the extra.

Dorper are hair sheep mostly and usually come naturally polled good points but if you live in a cold climate make sure they can handle your weather with the shelter provided, you may need to coat them, i would assume most places in the US they would be fine but if your friend lives in Canada, or someplace that gets really really cold it might be a problem.

Also consider most dorper crosses to wool sheep will not produce shedding sheep on the first cross but will produce wooled sheep with a fairly large amount of hair in the fleece, the second cross making them 3/4 dorper will mostly shed but again not all, on the third cross all offspring should shed. Since Corridale come from Merino sheep i would think the gene to stay wooled would be fairly strong in them but thats only speculation.

One last thing.. Dorper's are primarily raised for mutton. If they want to do market lambs with hair sheep try Katahdin perhaps, they usually have twins, come in lots of colors, resistant to parasites and are also naturally polled as well as being a mid-size sheep.

EDIT: opps sister not friend lol.


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## Bossroo (Oct 12, 2016)

T.O.R. --- The Corriedale is a great dual purpose production sheep, however for the small operation , due to today's HIGH COST of shearing the sheep, wool is a money loosing proposition. Here and there, a few sell wool at a high enough price to break even  if they can supply it to hand spinners willing to pay the price over and above what they can buy yarn imported from Australia.   The trend here for the best chance to make a profit is the hair sheep especially  the Dorper for meat and their hide for high quality leather.


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## misfitmorgan (Oct 12, 2016)

Bossroo said:


> T.O.R. --- The Corriedale is a great dual purpose production sheep, however for the small operation , due to today's HIGH COST of shearing the sheep, wool is a money loosing proposition. Here and there, a few sell wool at a high enough price to break even  if they can supply it to hand spinners willing to pay the price over and above what they can buy yarn imported from Australia.   The trend here for the best chance to make a profit is the hair sheep especially  the Dorper for meat and their hide for high quality leather.



Definately agree....the wool market here is pretty much non-existant unless you can do value added products. I know some people make the fleece into batts and make pillows or comforters out of it which they sell for about $600 for a King size blanket but i have no idea how many fleece it takes to make say one king size comforter. I know there are some neiche breeds they sell the wool for 12-29/lb mostly the mils will offer $3/lb when they are buying but they dont buy often. As far as i know it is not a problem limited to sheep, it is all fiber animals.


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## lalabugs (Oct 12, 2016)

She is looking just for meat, not looking for wool profit. She got the girls for a deal. The people didn't want to deal with a ram on their property, so sold the girls off instead. They got the the sheep & goats from a friend who got deployed and sold them cheap to them. To give them a good home. Anyways that's why she got them. They're fully tested and everything. We were raised on lamb. Which we LOVE. However trying to find it in at a store is hard enough. Raising and butchering would be strictly for meat for her family and if we wanted to go in on the lambs feed, meat for the rest of the family. There is someone who has Katahdin sheep near her. Just looking for a good growing, preferably hair sheep where she only needs to sheer her girls.


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## Bossroo (Oct 12, 2016)

misfitmorgan said:


> Definately agree....the wool market here is pretty much non-existant unless you can do value added products. I know some people make the fleece into batts and make pillows or comforters out of it which they sell for about $600 for a King size blanket but i have no idea how many fleece it takes to make say one king size comforter. I know there are some neiche breeds they sell the wool for 12-29/lb mostly the mils will offer $3/lb when they are buying but they dont buy often. As far as i know it is not a problem limited to sheep, it is all fiber animals.


I agree that the value problem of wool value is not limited to sheep.  Other fiber animals are experiencing similar issues.  The "progressives " are going around this country espousing the $15/ hr.   minimum wage.  If that is so then many small farmers will go out of business.  In anticipation of this, there is an Alpaca breeder  ( 5 miles from our house ) that owns about 100 head and sells them Nationaly as well as Internationaly. I visited them a couple months ago at their annual open house and they said that they are now agressively selling off their herd at way below last years prices  as they have had losses in selling the Alpaca fiber plus the rise in feed and labor costs and foresee it getting much worse.  The writing is on the wall, how many of the small farmers will head the warning before they loose their shirts ?


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## misfitmorgan (Oct 13, 2016)

We shear our own so there is no high cost per say just some time...but then what to do with the fleece....most mills refuse to buy raw fleeces anymore. We can pay to have it processed but it is very expensive, to have it washed and thats it is $5.25/lb. The mill does offer everything from wash to finished yarn or other products with your wool but none of it is cost effective. Such as socks, you must send in enough wool for a 1-2 dozen pairs of socks min. depending on style. The socks are 100lbs or more of raw fiber...10.70-14.95 per pair and take 1 year to make. So if you want wool socks from your own sheep and cant knit this option would cost min $129 plus shipping you 100lbs of fleece to them and them shipping back your socks. Less then 100lbs of fleece and the price per pair goes up in tiers the most costly being 30-49lbs 12.70-17.95/pair. If you want knee-high its a dollar more per pair. Quite honestly for a dozen pairs of well made high quality wool socks it is reasonably since they are knit by hand but most people will not want to pay a high price and wait a year to see a return on it. You can get wool washed and processed into different types of batts or roving 8.55/lb. So yeah i can see how this would be handy for people with smaller flocks who want to do something with their fleece or sell it at a farmers market or locally in a shop or etsy etc. Even the low grade wool made into roving seems to be selling for $15+ per lb.


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## Baymule (Oct 13, 2016)

Well that is very informative. I have this mental picture of me having fiber sheep, shearing, spinning and knitting garments. But reality is that I am busting butt to get infrastructure done and still have a long way to go. When would I have time for all that? Still dreaming....


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## misfitmorgan (Oct 13, 2016)

Baymule said:


> Well that is very informative. I have this mental picture of me having fiber sheep, shearing, spinning and knitting garments. But reality is that I am busting butt to get infrastructure done and still have a long way to go. When would I have time for all that? Still dreaming....



Here we do most labor intensive stuff in the winter because it is to cold to do much outside but i imagine texas dont have that problem much. Infrastruture takes the longest after that its just maintaining.


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## Baymule (Oct 13, 2016)

misfitmorgan said:


> Here we do most labor intensive stuff in the winter because it is to cold to do much outside but i imagine texas dont have that problem much. Infrastruture takes the longest after that its just maintaining.



Yeah, no snowed in conditions here, all cozy by the fire happily knitting away, looking out at the deep snow drifts.  We have a few dips in the 20's, but it quickly warms back up.


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## NH homesteader (Oct 13, 2016)

I wouldn't know what to do without the season that forces me to stop moving fencing. 

On the other hand... Chores take about 4x the amount of time trudging through snow.


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## Mike CHS (Oct 14, 2016)

Many years ago I lived in Michigan and enjoyed all that white while hunting.  We don't get much snow here in TN but we do get some dips in the teen's.  We will use the down time to clean out the last of the previous owners trash dumps in a deep ravine that probably has several pickup loads of assorted trash and some things we have to wonder where they came from.


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## misfitmorgan (Oct 14, 2016)

Baymule said:


> Yeah, no snowed in conditions here, all cozy by the fire happily knitting away, looking out at the deep snow drifts.  We have a few dips in the 20's, but it quickly warms back up.



Not at all lol. More like mix feed, put down new flooring, paint the house(inside of course), re-arrange cabinets, remodel rooms, clean and process deer, make sure the fire stays going so we dont freeze to death and the water pipes dont freeze, go cut more fire wood, split and stack more wood, chores do in deed take 2-3 times longer because we have to pound the ice blocks out of every single water bowl or bucket, then we have to bucket water from the house to the barn for all the livestock because all of the outside water taps freeze. If im lucky i have time to start a project in winter and maybe get more work done on it the next year lol. I'm hoping to gewt two fleeces skirted, washed, and made into roving or batting this winter. I've never washed a fleece so it will be a learning experience. We also both work full time outside the farm and in winter DH works about 20hrs a week of overtime. The best best part...(sense the irony) i get off work at 4pm and home at 4:30pm if i dont have to pick up DH if i do we get home at 5pm....it gets dark at what time in the winter? lol We hate wading thru snowdrifts with 10 gallons of water each...in the dark.


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## NH homesteader (Oct 14, 2016)

Sounds about right.  Thanks for the reminder of what's coming! I don't work anymore though,  but  my husband works 12pm-12am in the  winter so I'm doing most of that alone. Well with a 3 year old,  which is interesting. She'll be 4 this winter,  not big enough to lug water yet!


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## frustratedearthmother (Oct 14, 2016)

misfitmorgan said:


> ....it gets dark at what time in the winter? lol We hate wading thru snowdrifts with 10 gallons of water each...in the dark



Can. Not. Even. Imagine!


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## misfitmorgan (Oct 14, 2016)

NH homesteader said:


> Sounds about right.  Thanks for the reminder of what's coming! I don't work anymore though,  but  my husband works 12pm-12am in the  winter so I'm doing most of that alone. Well with a 3 year old,  which is interesting. She'll be 4 this winter,  not big enough to lug water yet!



Get her a sled...lol. Seriously, you should get one for yourself, saves the heck out of your back and you can haul more water at a time. DH got a me a sled for when he has to work late and i have to take all the water myself. 5 gallon buckets with lids...fill them in the house..lid on..in the sled.....pull them into the barn...open...bang out ice blocks....fill....repeat. My sled did fits 3 5gallon buckets at a time....but pull slowly lol. If you need to go down a steep hill let the sled go first Unfortunately i was in a hurry near the end of winter last year and i pulled to fast over soft snow and me sled broke  I kept using it but each time to bottom broke more and more until it was no longer useable. Luckily about a week later the tap in the barn thawed out.


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## fitzy (Jan 19, 2017)

However said:
			
		

> I'm kinda in the same situation as the OP, but i haven't made any purchases yet....
> 
> The dorper seems like it could be a good choice for me, but looking around on craigslist all i'm finding locally is dorper crossed with a katahdin...my best guess is to try to get the size of the katahdin in the growth time of the dorper??  If not, I'm not seeing a good reason for the cross...


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## Latestarter (Jan 19, 2017)

Hey @fitzy ! welcome back! Been a very, very long time!  I'll be getting sheep here shortly and that's the cross I hope to be doing. I want hair sheep as I don't want to have to sheer, and I want meat sheep. I want the size and fast growth, but also I understand the flavor and texture of that cross is pretty nice. Not really sure where you're located (You might consider putting that in your profile), but I'm in NE TX and there are breeders of both within a few hours drive of me for both breeds. I expect to sell the crosses for farm use as well as for meat. I'll probably keep some ewe lambs as well to grow my flock a bit.


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