In the past two years my ram has sired 10 lambs of which 1 was an ewe lamb and 9 were ram lambs. Does any one know if this trend is likely to continue or will it even out (about 50/50) over the years?

-- Calvin Kalmon (calvin@dwave.net), May 02, 2001

Answers

Hi Calvin

I know that feeding alfalfa pellets or hay to your ewes prior to breeding and during the first term will produce a larger likelihood of rams being born. I also found this year that placing the ewes in with the ram later in their heat and as late in the afternoon as possible seems to have given me more ewelambs also. Out of 8 ewes delivering we have 10 ewelambs to 4 ramlambs. I like these odds and will see if it works the same next year. Good luck and I wish more ewes for you Anne

-- Anne (pygmy@bulkley.net), May 02, 2001.

Goats of course, but we simply have not seen anything work reliably. Breeding by the moon phases was just blasted out of the water with a gal on my site, vinegar in the water does a fine job of keeping algea growth in your waters down, but doesn't decrease or increase acidity in the does system, and if it was true it worked, wouldn't everybody have all doe kids? Nutrition of course plays a big key in numbers of kid/lambs per ewe/doe, and the health of the babies and moms, but not in sex. Over the lifetime of our does we see really close to 50 50. I have only 1 doe, who is 8 who has had all bucklings. We simply don't see anything to the buck supplying male or female sperm, though we do know scientifically it is true. 10 animals in 2 years is not a big enough group to start blaming the ram, especially if these were his first lambs. Though unscientific :) we do see a much larger amount of bucks born out of young bucks vs. older bucks. Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), May 02, 2001.

Our first year, young buck, the percentage was one buck lamb for each two ewe lambs. Second year, three year old buck, 55% buck lambs, but those lambs that were born dead or died were buck lambs. Hmmmmm. I heard that it will usually be around 50-50 give or take.

-- JoAnn in SD (jonehls@excite.com), May 02, 2001.

Sorry, forgot to add that we feed alfalfa to ewes 6 weeks prior to birth and then add corn (1 lb. per day per ewe) the last week. Don't know if that makes a difference. We also leave our buck in with the ewes day and night for 45-60 days. The ewes that were bred last threw the most ewes though.

-- JoAnn in SD (jonehls@excite.com), May 02, 2001.

Vicky is right on this, be it a goat person speaking.We have never had much influence on the sex of our lambs, just time of day they were born.(We have fine tuned that by feeding them their big meal, hay and grain, late morning, and just hay in evening. Now 90% of our lambs are born between 6:00 am and 11:00 am. Somehow related to when their rumens are the emptiest, triggers the onset of labor.) Back to the sex of the lambs, over the years we have averaged 50/50. Last year it was mostly rams and this year we ended up with 26 ewe lambs out of 32 born, just the opposite as last year and same rams. We have some in now for breeding and than this fall will get new rams. Don't give up on him, you will probably have a run of ewe lambs next few years. Besides in the sheep business isn't it the ram lambs that bring in the money. Kate

-- Kate henderson (kate@sheepyvalley.com), May 02, 2001.

It's all statistics (maybe school was good for something!) The chance of a male is 50% or 1/2. The chance of another male is also 50%, the chance of a third male is still 50%. The chance of 3 males is then 1/ 2 x 1/2 x 1/2 =(1/8) It gets more complicated allowing for a random female in 10 births, but I work it out to be a 10/1024 probabilty (1.024%). i.e. about 1 in every 100 sequences of 10 births will yield 9 males. The same is true for 9 females. Could be worse for you, 1 in every 1024 will yield 10 males!

What we find is that our purebred ewes yield more males and our mixed breed ewes yield more females. I think this is called Murphy's Law!

-- David C (fleece@eritter.net), May 03, 2001.

A friend of mine insists that she got almost entirely doe kids by giving her does a vitamin C shot just as they were coming into heat, right before breeding them.

-- Chamoisee (chamoisee@yahoo.com), May 03, 2001.

I've found that breeding early in the season (Sept. & Oct.) usually results in a greater percentage of doe kids as compared to breeding later (Nov. & Dec.). Maybe due to a change in the PH balance in the doe?? (More or less alkaline & acidic). Who knows!!? I try to breed no later than Oct. and always have more does,maybe just one or two more, but always more!

-- Marcia (HrMr@webtv.net), May 03, 2001.

Well we bred late in the season, November and December, and got he 26 ewe lambs out of 32 births.

-- Kate henderson (kate@sheepyvalley.com), May 04, 2001.