How to choose the breeding period of sheep

The selection of breeding period should be determined according to the conditions of the breeding household, the condition of the ewes and the effect of the lambing season on the growth and development of the lamb. The lambing period of one-month-old ewes is generally two, respectively in winter and spring. The ewes are mated in August-September. The lambs produced in January-February of the second year are called winter lambs; the ewes are mated in October-December, and the lambs born in March-May in the second year are spring lambs. Both lambs have their own advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage of producing winter lambs is that the ewes have good nutritional conditions during pregnancy. Lambs have a large primary body and good constitution. After weaning, they can eat grass. They grow fast and develop well in the later period, and they have stronger wintering ability and higher incidence than spring. Lambs are low, so the survival rate of lambs is relatively high and the amount of shearing is also high. The disadvantage is that the rearing household must stock a large number of overwintering feedstuffs, forage grasses, and have good warmth-keeping properties in the sheep house, and at the same time be equipped with more labor. The main advantage of spring lambs is that the weather of the lambs has been warmed up at birth, which can reduce the cold protection equipment of the shed. The ewes can eat green grass during lactation and have more milk, which is beneficial to the growth of lambs. The disadvantage is that the ewes are in the winter of feed and forage due to lack of nutrition during the entire gestation period. Therefore, the fetus is stunted, the lamb's initial birth weight is small, the constitution is weak, the second year's shearing amount is low, and the weight is light. In addition, since the spring lamb is already at the time of weaning, it has an adverse effect on the ewe's ejaculation, estrus, breeding, and wintering of the year.

Posted on June 21, 2018