Why are sheep culled

Generally the better the body condition score at mating, the higher the ovulation rate and therefore the higher the potential lambing crop. Overfat ewes i. Ewes with a condition score of less than 3 at mating will be more responsive to the effects of flushing than those with a condition score of 3 Assessment of your flock after drying off to pinpoint problems and addressing health issues will ensure more productive ewes are kept for the next breeding season.

Once culling is completed, your focus can turn to genetic improvement in the flock through ewe and ram replacement selection. Find out more about Sheep here. If you liked reading this article you might like to read 'Best practice on spent sheep dip and footbath solutions'. Teagasc Advisors are regular contributors of articles on topics of interest to farmers here on Teagasc Daily.

When deciding which ewes should be culled from the flock, first eliminate those open ewes and those that have lost lambs due to excessive lambing difficulty, as well as those ewes that have prolapsed or have shown that they are prone to a prolapse condition. A ewe that does not breed one time will lose a significant amount of her lifetime production potential. It will take the returns of 2 — 3 productive ewes to pay for the maintenance of one open ewe.

One of the top reasons for culling ewes and rams is health issues. Health issues can be a large drain on time, labor, and resources. Such health issues as chronic foot rot and foot scald make management of the flock more difficult. Sheep that are limping from foot rot and foot scald perform poorly and should be culled from the flock.

Mastitis is another health issue which causes damage to the udder and causes low milk production. Also check eyes for cloudiness or other issues that may cause vision problems.

These ewes create management difficulty because they generally cannot produce enough milk to maintain the nutritional needs of their lamb s , thereby creating a need to orphan or bottle feed the lamb s so they can survive until weaning. Structurally unsound ewes incorrect feet and legs, mouth and hard keeping, emaciated ewes should also be considered as culling candidates, as their nutritional needs are much higher than the average of the ewe flock, and there is no reason to continue producing these types of genetics as possible replacements.

Late lambing ewes are the fourth potential culling criteria. As a producer, you will need to look at your lambing distribution during the lambing season and identify those ewes that lamb during the third, fourth, or later lambing cycles.

Generally ewe lambs and ram lambs born in the earlier lamb groups will be the most productive sheep in the flock. A producer should keep in mind whose fault it was that the ewe bred in a later heat cycle. Reasons that are not the fault of the ewe includes an inadequate nutritional flushing program prior to breeding season and a second reason may be ram infertility.

This is a cheap, convenient way to monitor for these diseases in unvaccinated flocks, and to guide vaccination should it be required. It is good practice to investigate all of these factors by both physically examining the group, reviewing the numbers of ewes put to the ram, reviewing the ration and lameness control, and taking samples for diagnostic tests.

Cull ewes are usually the ewes that are struggling most in the flock, and any flock based problems are likely to be present in these animals. Examining this group helps to target our investigation into flock diseases by testing a small number of animals. A pooled faecal sample taken from the group can be examined for worm and liver fluke burdens to assess parasite control. These are chronic diseases that often show very mild clinical signs until it is a flock wide problem and very difficult to tackle.

There is no treatment or vaccination available for MV or CLA, and often we must cull these diseases out the flock, which is very costly. Annual screening of barren and cull animals is a very simple, cost effective disease control measure that all sheep farmers can utilise.