The lambs are looking great this year, and the Texel cross experiment has convinced us to add a flock of Texels to our program. Originally we intended to use the Texel as a terminal sire, meaning all his lambs get eaten, not kept for breeding. After talking to a couple breeders, one of which came to purchase a different lamb and took a TexelX ram lamb instead, and another who has been breeding Finnsheep, Texels, and their crosses for quite a while, we realized that the TexelX lambs have potential as breeding stock themselves. With the muscularity of the Texel, and the prolificacy of the Finnsheep, they have the potential to produce high numbers of good market lambs, especially when bred to a meat sire. The ram lambs also have the potential to be a good producer of market lambs or production ewes.
Our experiment with the Bluefaced Leicester/Finnsheep cross as production ewes is continuing, though in a limited fashion, as we have realized the BFL has little to no resiliency, and is mostly redundant to the Finnsheep. Our first BFL/Finn ewe lamb was bred last fall, and performed on par with the second year Finn ewes, with total 90 day weaned lamb weight being 108 lbs while she herself was 100 lbs. We will be keeping 3 BFL/Finn ewe lambs from this spring, evaluating their performance, and then deciding whether or not to continue with that cross.
