Who's your daddy?

When we bought our Border Leceister ewes, we needed to find a ram to put with them. I happened on a very nice, older ram whose owner had some unfortunate financial problems and was selling her flock. This ram, very nice, had gotten thin in his old age. She gave him to us with the caveat that we would treat him like the prized stud he’d been in his youth, because the alternative was going to auction. We drove halfway to meet her and get our new ram.

As you can see from the picture, he was very undernourished. Was this a good choice for us financially, given that we had to really spend a lot of time and money on extra feed to bring him back into good shape? Older rams often aren’t so potent as a younger ram might be. We gambled, and you can see from the “after” picture that we got a very nice ram for our trouble. He’s a very pleasant fellow to be around and produced some nice offspring.

Here’s the twist in the story. Every few years we have to change our rams, because all the ewes except the original girls are now daughters. Our old ram is going to stay with us as he reaches the end of his life, which may be sooner rather than later since he is now 10 years old. His sons that we’ve kept are very nice. I couldn’t find a replacement ram that I liked in driving distance, until I remembered a breeder in upper east Tennessee who originally bred the relatives of my ewes. Fortune smiled on both of us - I liked his ram and he liked mine. On Wednesday we are traveling north to make the trade. We’re looking forward to more quality wool in our future!