East Friesian Sheep

[77Herford]

Thinking about adding some East Friesian rams to my flock next year to increase the overall milk production of my flock. I want to be able to not have to bottle feed so many lambs. I'm already marking the ewes who can't produce enough milk to feed all their lambs.
Right now I have 50 Katahadins and some mixed ewes of Dorper and Kat. My rams are all Black Faced Dorpers.

 

[boykin2010]

Good luck finding one. I have looked all over the internet and there is hardly any nearby. They are also really expensive for some reason.
If i could find an ewe nearby i might consider getting it. It would be nice to be able to milk my sheep....

 

[boykin2010]

Saying that, i just found a breeder in florida!
http://www.sheepgoatmarketing.info/...d.cfm&sortType=SheepBreed&Breed=East Friesian

 

[77Herford]

http://www.nebraskasheep.com/directory/Breeds/Friesian/

Finding them isn't an issue. From this link here you will see many breeders and crosses available across the country.
I was asking what people thought of the idea.

 

[marlowmanor]

ok, I'll play devils advocate for you. Do you have a market for sheep milk (assuming you can legally sell it)? Do you just plan to freeze all the milk to use for bottle lambs? What do you plan to do with the wool when you shear them? What will you do with extra rams or ewes you don't want to keep? If you sell them do you have a market/buyers for them?

 

[aggieterpkatie]

77, are your ewes that are having trouble feeding all those lambs having triplets? Or twins? Are you flushing the ewes before you breed them? If you're flushing and having too many set of t rips, you may consider not flushing so you get more twins. What are you feeding the ewes after they lamb? Katahdins *should* definitely be able to raise twins with ease, and most should be able to raise trips too. I'm curious about the details.

 

[77Herford]

A few had trips and just didn't seem to have enough milk for all of them so I took one out of the mix. Most are twins or singles. I wasn't talking straight East Friesians but crossing them.

 

[zzGypsy]

we did this... but added east fresian / lacauna cross ewes because we had a ram line we're working with. I've had a dozen or so ewes now that are 1/2 or 1/4 fresian/lacouna ... we regularly get twins and occasionally trips from them and we haven't *had* to bottle feed any of them.

we found with the trips, there's usually one getting the sort end of the milk, so we supplement that one with once- or twice-daily milk from our dairy goats. I suspect if we didn't that 3rd lamb would still be fine, just grow a little slower than it's sibs. next year we might pull the third lamb and just bottle raise them and see how that works for us.

things I've noted -

the fresian/lacouna full blood and crosses are calm, curious, bold and less fearful of people in general.

they definitely out-produce the majority of our other ewes in the milk department. (we have a few non-dairy sheep that are exceptional producers.)

they're good mothers, attentive and can count to 3 when they've got triplets.

we haven't had trips from any of our non-dairy line sheep, although we get almost entirely twins.

the dairy and dairy cross ewes seem to lose more condition while in milk than our other ewes - they get thinner and take a little longer to build back up after weaning. that was a little unnerving at first but it seems to be just the way they are. we do suplement their feed, and we're still playing with that to see if we can keep their weight up more, but so far, there's a noticable difference between the dairy ewes and the non-dairy line ewes in this department.

the dairy line sheep can EAT and they are ALWAYS hungry. we don't measure relative feed amounts, but they're first to the feed bucket and last to leave it.

the dairy line lambs grow FAST.

at 1/4 dairy sheep we're getting nice heavy market lambs. the 1/2 dairy line lambs are good weight, but don't have quite the beefy structure that our current ram does. the 1/4 dairy line lambs from the same ram have his heavy build, just longer legs and quicker growth rate.

our full dairy ewes are more worm-suspeptable than the rest of the flock so we have to watch them for worm signs more carefully. haven't noticed this to be true with the 1/2 and 1/4 dairy line sheep.

and... sheep are hard to hand milk. if you want to know more about this, ask. but the milk is aMAZing and it's all I'd ever have if I had a choice.

we cut back our flock a lot this summer because we're in the process of moving cross country, but in the spring we'll be adding some more fresians or fresian/lacouna ewes. it's worked really well for us. our ram line is mixed breed meat and wool sheep we've selected for quick growth, large size, heavy carcass, calm temperament, and medium-grade wool production. we'll probably stay with this ram line and add dairy ewes and retain dairy ewe crosses for the next two or three years, then introduce a new meat-breed ram line.

 

[77Herford]

we did this... but added east fresian / lacauna cross ewes because we had a ram line we're working with. I've had a dozen or so ewes now that are 1/2 or 1/4 fresian/lacouna ... we regularly get twins and occasionally trips from them and we haven't *had* to bottle feed any of them.

we found with the trips, there's usually one getting the sort end of the milk, so we supplement that one with once- or twice-daily milk from our dairy goats. I suspect if we didn't that 3rd lamb would still be fine, just grow a little slower than it's sibs. next year we might pull the third lamb and just bottle raise them and see how that works for us.

things I've noted -

the fresian/lacouna full blood and crosses are calm, curious, bold and less fearful of people in general.

they definitely out-produce the majority of our other ewes in the milk department. (we have a few non-dairy sheep that are exceptional producers.)

they're good mothers, attentive and can count to 3 when they've got triplets.

we haven't had trips from any of our non-dairy line sheep, although we get almost entirely twins.

the dairy and dairy cross ewes seem to lose more condition while in milk than our other ewes - they get thinner and take a little longer to build back up after weaning. that was a little unnerving at first but it seems to be just the way they are. we do suplement their feed, and we're still playing with that to see if we can keep their weight up more, but so far, there's a noticable difference between the dairy ewes and the non-dairy line ewes in this department.

the dairy line sheep can EAT and they are ALWAYS hungry. we don't measure relative feed amounts, but they're first to the feed bucket and last to leave it.

the dairy line lambs grow FAST.

at 1/4 dairy sheep we're getting nice heavy market lambs. the 1/2 dairy line lambs are good weight, but don't have quite the beefy structure that our current ram does. the 1/4 dairy line lambs from the same ram have his heavy build, just longer legs and quicker growth rate.

our full dairy ewes are more worm-suspeptable than the rest of the flock so we have to watch them for worm signs more carefully. haven't noticed this to be true with the 1/2 and 1/4 dairy line sheep.

and... sheep are hard to hand milk. if you want to know more about this, ask. but the milk is aMAZing and it's all I'd ever have if I had a choice.

we cut back our flock a lot this summer because we're in the process of moving cross country, but in the spring we'll be adding some more fresians or fresian/lacouna ewes. it's worked really well for us. our ram line is mixed breed meat and wool sheep we've selected for quick growth, large size, heavy carcass, calm temperament, and medium-grade wool production. we'll probably stay with this ram line and add dairy ewes and retain dairy ewe crosses for the next two or three years, then introduce a new meat-breed ram line.

Thank you thats exactly what I was looking for. The quarter mix sounds like a great fit for my herd.

 

[zzGypsy]

you're welcome.

a couple more thoughts:

we haven't had the cross in our line long enough to have 1/4 dairy ewes bred and lambing yet, so I don't know how the 1/8 dairy lambs grow. we'll have a couple of those this year... if we like the result we'll look at orienting our ewe base to 1/4 crosses. if we don't, we'll try to keep 1/2 dairy crosses in our producing ewe flock.

I think the reason the 1/2 dairy and 1/4 dairy lambs grow so fast is partly just that dairy sheep seem to start quicker and go up faster, but also that they're getting all the high quality milk they can use because the ewes are high producers.

we haven't tried to quantify the difference in milk production between our full and 1/2 dairy ewes... the full dairy ewes definitely sport bigger udders, but I don't know if the milk production is significantly different between the two groups. we haven't noticed any significant difference in the growth rate of their lambs, just that the 1/4 lambs are heavier built than the 1/2 lambs.

it will be interesting to see how 1/4 dairy ewes produce. I do think there'll be some milk production loss at 1/4 dairy genes, I don't know if it will be compensated for by the growth rate of the lambs. my expectation is tht it won't and we'll want to stay with mostly 1/2 dairy production ewes.

in the diary and dairy crosses, we've had very little trouble with slow to stand, dumb lambs, or lambs that can't figure out which end to nurse. we did have some of this in our ram-line before we added the dairy ewes, and occasionally see it in our non-dairy line lambs. the dairy lambs seem to arrive alert and active, and they've improved that in our flock.

the dairy sheep have lower grade wool, and considerably less of it, and we do see some of that in reduced quality wool in the first and second generation lambs. if you're breeding to hair sheep, you may or may not get year-round wool, but they generally are not going to add heavy wool. we ended up with one ewe (not a dairy ewe) that we think may be 1/2 hair sheep, probably dorper / romney cross. she's got heavy wool, year round growth, and heavy guard hair that makes the wool worthless... my guess is that's sort of what you'll see on your first gen crosses - wool the weight of the diary parent, and year round growth (needing sheering) but with the guard hair that will make the wool not very saleable. if you find that's NOT true, I'd be interested to hear about it. I dont' know anyone who's running 50/50 hair/wool crosses that get full hair sheep shedding... but my selection to comment on is really small, just a few sheep with backyard breeders.

can't think of anything else at the moment, let me know if you've got questions I haven't covered.