As we enter the new century it is time to consider our hopes for the Southdown in the commercial environment. During the past twenty years the breed has lost its popularity with the commercial flock owners and is now regarded sadly as being more of a novelty than a respected terminal sire.
Those of us who remember the 60s and 70s, when hundreds of rams were sold up and down the country for use on large commercial ewe flocks, are saddened by the lack of enthusiasm in the market place. We, of course, know why this happened.
It began with the introduction of the Texel and was closely followed by the Charollais. Both excellent producers of the no-fat carcasses which were in demand on the butchers' blocks. The effect this had on breeders was to seek other outlets for our rams. The Rare Breeds accepted the Southdown on to lists of rare breeds and its popularity among the newcomers to the good life began. This provided a sales outlet at a time when it was desperately needed.
However, I believe that this has had a long term detrimental effect by advertising the Southdown as a cute little sheep, too fat for today's housewives and heralding the demise of the commercial terminal sire which those of us who remember Ashford Market in its heyday can recall with pride. I believe that it is time we all started to fight back.
We know that our rams can produce the best lamb carcasses in the market place if only the commercial man would give us a chance. But first, we as a Society must educate our new breeders to the needs of the farmer and start to produce the kind of rams that he is looking for. Firstly, he wants a large framed lamb for the weight. Then it must be well covered without being fat. We can do this with careful breeding without losing the Southdown's good qualities.
The place to learn the vagaries of good breeding is at the breed's Show and Sale, where a large number of top Southdown breeders will be exhibiting their animals. It is up to us all to encourage the new breeders to come along and purchase their stud rams. We must all forget about the Swop Shop idea of passing on our old rams and be prepared to purchase a first class ram from our well established flocks. A very respectable ram can be purchased today for £150, which will be money well spent and give the owner a sense of pride at lambing time. This will then lead to a more vibrant sale ring and will pass the message around that the Southdown is a breed to be reckoned with.
Might I suggest that we have a venue somewhere in middle England, which will be accessible to more breeders around August time, and why don't we make it a social event along the lines of the old Findon Show and Sale?
JEAN ARMSTRONG
If there is a starting point for the preparation of ewes for the breeding season, then it is probably at weaning. At least two months should be allowed between weaning and mating so that ewes have time to recover from the rigours of pregnancy and lactation. If they are not given sufficient time to do so then there may be a delay in the onset of sexual activity in Autumn, a reduction in the number of eggs shed during oestrus, and consequently a poor lamb crop. Good body condition is necessary for optimum ovulation rate and also to build up body reserves which can be drawn on during pregnancy.
Weaning is an important time to check the health of ewes and to identify for culling any ewes with conditions which will make them unsuitable for breeding the following season. Some of the diseases which may lead to culling are mastitis, lameness, and teeth problems.
The period between weaning and mating is the most important to me. Getting your ewes into the right body condition is critical. Condition score your ewes and put them into three categories: FAT, FIT, and THIN. The fat ewes are the biggest problem. They need to be put on the poorest and barest pasture you have available, or even house them and feed them on an ad-lib diet of straw to try and reduce body fat. A small corner of a field fenced off would do.
These actions may sound drastic but it is extremely important to thin these ewes down. Fat sheep do not perform well. With these over-fat ewes there is a depressive effect upon ovulation rate - hence singles being born and, even if twins are conceived, they are usually born small and weak with lack of room to grow inside due to internal fat.
The fit ewes need to have their condition maintained, so reasonable grazing should be offered. Thin ewes will need good grass to help them gain condition and this can take at least six weeks. It is a good idea to find fresh grass for flushing at least two weeks before mating.
Between the period of weaning and mating it is important to keep your ewes well away from the sight, sound and particularly the smell of the ram. At flushing I introduce the teaser rams as an aid to bring the ewes into oestrus and to help compact the lambing period. The teasers are with the ewes for fourteen days and are then replaced with the stud ram.
If you feel a teaser ram might be worth a try, ask around to see if you could borrow or hire one but make sure they have been vasectomized by an experienced vet.
BOB BACKSHALL
The title of this discussion is curious. For some reason the term "medium" is ignored as though it cannot exist in the Southdown breed.
One could conclude that the best Southdown specimens must be either Big or Small. However, the only true criterion of the value of a Southdown sheep is its ability to do whatever job is required of it.
Most Southdown breeders keep Southdowns because they are aesthetically pleasing. This is excellent but it must be remembered that the Southdown is commercially rare and we must conclude that looks aren't everything.
It is an indisputable fact that the Southdown once had the top reputation for sheep meat production internationally. Professors Watson and Moore in their classic Agriculture, the Science and Practise of British Farming (Second Edition, 1928) wrote: "For quality of meat the breed is unsurpassed, and as a winner of carcass competitions it occupies a place comparable to that of Aberdeen Angus among cattle and the Berkshire among pigs."
Unfortunately this knowledge went to the heads of British breeders and generation by generation they reduced the size of all three breeds, and also their position in the commercial world. Today we find that Southdowns and Berkshires are protected breeds and the Aberdeen Angus breeders have had to hasten abroad to find bigger strains. It is most unfortunate that there is a fixed idea among most Southdown breeders that the true "traditional" Southdown is a shapely but minuscule bundle of fat. These objects are most attractive to sheep fanciers who really need their own club to promote toy sheep.
The pre-1920s Southdowns were relatively large sheep and well suited to a hard life grazing and folding on the light chalk soils. Many flocks were obliged to trek long distances for feed and water, usually up steep inclines. To confirm this statement it is possible to consult the Southdown Flock Books. Photographs of prize-winning sheep were begun in volume XII, 1903. By the middle/late 1930s, Lady Ludlow (with her Luton Hoo flock) was winning National prizes with astonishingly short-legged rams.
Present day breeders have a heavy responsibility for the future wellbeing of their breed. The advocates of "bigness" must combine all the commercial attitudes necessary to produce premium lamb and rams suitable for crossing with all breeds of ewe. These attributes include 1) lively new-born lambs of good birth weight, 2) adequate amounts of milk from the ewes, 3) lean, tasty lamb carcasses grading E2, E3L, E2 and U3L at about 18 weeks of age.
Advocates of smallness have a harder row to hoe - as smallness is easily equated with fatness, inadequate milk, inadequate birth and dead weights, constant casting, and rams unable to serve commercial ewes.
From a personal point of view, I would plump for a good medium-sized ewe giving a proper financial return from both butcher's lambs and commercial crossing rams.
PAUL WAKEHAM-DAWSON MA DipAgric (Cambridge)
Registered Southdowns have not always weighed 120 lbs. at eighteen months old. If they had, they would have been extinct by 1900. We, the Society, are now inducing their downfall by encouraging small sheep.
In 1919, in the "Live Classes" at Smithfield Show, lambs of 9-10 months old weighed 181 lbs., while 12-24 month old animals weighed 214 lbs. These were averages. This means that a mature working ram would have weighed about 220 lbs. Cross that onto a commercial ewe and, depending on management, the offspring should be the "ideal 18 kg." (39.6 lbs.) carcass in 14 weeks, off clean grass (which is management).
A genetic 120 lbs. sire CANNOT gain 80 lbs. commercial carcass, so he cannot pass that on. Fat costs more in feed and time to produce and is not saleable.
Short legs with highly muscled bodies, especially lions and giggetts, are the optimum for the markets, not fatty drumsticks. So for any breed to have been developed for meat, as the Southdown was, it has to be of a decent size to be commercially viable off grass and to pass this onto its offspring strongly, i.e. grass to muscle, and in 14 weeks be saleable on virtually any commercial dam.
John Ellman did not spend his life breeding Southdowns to be "Billy Bunters" or "Tricky Woos", but an asset to the commercial sheep producers as a good converter of grass to meat.
If the sheep are not lean and heavy Southdown types, do not register them. Only Registered Southdowns are Southdowns.
DS is a trademark, as is Southdown, and therefore must be of a standard suitable for what it was intended. Sustaining that high standard is what the Southdown Society was set up for.
SARAH MITCHELL
In the days when we sent our sheets of fleece to the Wool Board, and then, providing we had obeyed the rules and not tied up anything with binder twine, and remembered to wind the fleeces properly, we would expect to have a return that would pay for the shearing and yield some profit. Not any longer. We cannot even pay the shearer, let alone make a profit nowadays. It is time for us to consider the alternatives and try to find a market ourselves.
This is easier if you do not have too many fleeces to dispose of, particularly if some of them are from older animals and not very good; then they will have to go to the Wool Board or the compost heap! Think of the number of people who knit, make rugs, felt, etc. They all need fleece. There are commercial firms who will card, wash and spin your fleece and turn it into beautiful knitting wool, or they will wash and card it for you to spin, and this saves a lot of hard work. Or you can do the whole lot yourself.
Spinning is a gentle, relaxing pastime, but the preparation is harder work. The answer is to do just a little at a time. Wool can be dyed chemically while it is being washed, which is handy if colours appeal. For natural dyeing, it is probably better to dye in skeins. Wool that has been spun commercially will be dyed in skeins as well.
Rug making with strips of carded fleece, using a basic wooden rectangular frame threaded with string warps, and twisting the woollen weft threads through by hand is very successful, as it is using a basic loom with two treadles. To make the rug even stronger, it is worth using some string or thick wool for two rows every 2/3 inches, to hold the fleece in place really tightly. Dyed wool means you can try using interesting colour combinations.
Felting is another possibility, where carded fleece is laid in thin layers on a piece of muslin, covered with another piece of muslin making a batten, and the whole thing stitched together before some very heavy-handed washing and kneading. It will shrink quite a bit during the process. Some people put the batten into a pillowcase and let the washing machine do the work, while it does an ordinary wash, and this does quite a good job with the minimum of effort. A steam iron will finish off the process. Felt can be used for many purposes: slippers, pictures, pencil cases, etc. Children love using it - especially if it is made in colours, although it is possible to paint on to it directly.
I once sold four fleeces to someone who, after washing and carding, used the fleeces between two sheets sewn together on her bed, and it was most successful. I believe the Japanese use Southdown fleece for their futons.
All these projects may be too much, and you just want to get rid of your lovely thick woolly fleeces, in which case your local Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers may provide some customers. Put your clean, wound fleeces into old sheets, or paper feed sacks - never plastic which makes the wool sweat - and try. Craft shops, W.I.s, and any collection of craft workers may have suggestions, and you should be able to get £5 a fleece. If, of course, you have balls of pure wool for sale, it might be worth trying knitting shops or your own personal friends. There is nothing nicer than a hand-made garment made with your own wool. Good luck.
SUE THOMPSON
If inexperienced, start with a few Southdowns only.
Ensure that your prospective purchases have been REGISTERED with the Society.
Sell your prime lambs or keep them for house use before they get too fat. They should be lean, well-fleshed, and weigh about 30 kg live weight. This will be at 14 weeks old.
Go to local and National Shows near to you. Talk to Southdown breeders. Find out how they are getting on with the breed. Ask if you can visit their Flock.
Join the Society and you will get the Flock Book. Ask for a list of all members in your area. Do not be afraid to ring up and talk to them and ask for advice.
There are Rare Breed Clubs all round the country. Find out if there is one near to you by ringing 01203 696551, and join the Club. There usually are a few Southdown Breeders as members.
REMEMBER that you have to feed your Southdowns at least twice a day, every day of the year, unless adequate clean grazing is available. If you are away, you must make arrangements for someone to do this. Consult other members and your neighbours. Consult also your local Agricultural Merchants.
SHEEP DO NOT LIVE ON GRASS ALONE all the year round. Do not be afraid to call in the VET. It costs money but may be worthwhile.
Only buy registered Southdowns. Check on this before you part with your money. Check with the Secretary on 01234 838807 if it is a member that is selling and that the Southdowns are registered.
When you join the Society you choose a name for your Flock and use it when registering your lambs. The rule is that all rams and ram lambs saved for breeding must be individually registered.
The Society has record sheets for you to purchase to keep your Southdown records.
The two most important points that the pedigree sheep breeder has to address are:
1. To breed a flock of healthy, hardy sheep that are correct in conformation, breed points, and uniformity.
2. To breed animals that will pass on these attributes to a large percentage of their offspring.
I am sure that most of the failures in line breeding can be attributed to one of three things:
On the other hand, there is no magic in line breeding but a lot of common sense, observation, and patience, coupled with that unexplainable feel that things are either going right or wrong, and, when they do go wrong, being ruthless enough to discard anything that has the slightest fault.
One method that I have used over the years is exactly the same as was expounded to me many years ago by an old flock master, who I suppose one could say had been a legend in his own lifetime. Every so often you get an outstanding ram lamb born. This does not happen very often, perhaps once in every four or five years. This type of ram should never be sold until you have at least tried him yourself, provided that both of its parents are good sheep without any obvious faults, true to type and breed standard, and relatively big for the breed.
I would mate this lamb with its mother. When the offspring from this mating is born you have to watch it grow up for at least a year, making sure that it has no hereditary faults. If everything is in order, it will be as good as its sire. When this is the case, you can use its sire to breed very closely. If it had any hereditary faults, they would have been apparent, for surely one cannot breed any closer than son on mother. Not only can you use this ram extensively over a period of years but also his sons can be used to breed very closely indeed.
The first indication that you are getting too close is that, although everything is fine, the sheep begin to lose a little size. You have then got to go outside for a splash of blood. This is best obtained by purchasing a ram that has been sired by one of yours and out of a ewe that has also been sired by one of your rams. In other words, you are buying back seventy-five per cent of your own breeding, plus twenty-five per cent of someone else's. This splash of outside blood will, in most cases, bring back the small amount of size that you have lost.
One of the things that you have to accept is that, when line breeding, you will have to keep more stud rams about than you really need. It takes two years to prove a ram before it can be used extensively and a proven ram you can never afford to sell. You may not want to use him for a year or two but the day may come when you do. In my opinion, any good breeder should have enough stud rams about to see him through the next two years at least.
It is all very well having the ideas and theories that I have just described but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I have never had any academic education but I have studied genetics in a practical way all my working life under the greatest teacher of them all: Mother Nature.
I have endeavoured to make a case for line breeding and now I will endeavour to prove that it can be done successfully. In 1968 we bought five in-lamb six-tooth Southdown ewes all by the same sire from a very old-established commercial flock of very correct sheep, but a flock that did no ram breeding or showing. These ewes cost ten pounds each. We bred these ewes very closely, and later their offspring were line bred for years. From these five ewes we have bred sheep that have won the Breed Championship at the Royal of England on eight occasions and twice we have had Male Champion and Female Champion, Breed Champion and Reserve on the same day. But what I consider to be the greatest achievement is that five of the Breed Champions have been won with pairs and the flock has never exceeded twelve ewes. It is difficult enough to bring out a single sheep to win the Royal but to do so with pairs, especially from a flock of twelve, even more so. This is surely the art of breeding, to repeatedly bring out sheep that match like peas in a pod.
In 1982 I started a small flock of Dorset Downs, buying twelve draft ewes, again from an old-established flock, for twenty-seven pounds each, and a further five two-tooth ewes from another flock for thirty pounds each. These ewes were too lame to be sold at the flock dispersal. Again these ewes were bred very closely and then line bred. We have won the Breed Champion at the Royal in 1988 and again in 1995. We have also had Opposite Sex to the Champion on three occasions and in 1996 at Devon County Show with a pair of ewe lambs we won the Interbreed Championship.
Not only have both flocks been very successful in the show ring but also in the sale yard, and have proved their ability to pass on their conformation and type. Another point I would like to make, and which I think I have again proved, is that it is not necessary to pay exorbitant prices for foundation sheep or to buy prizewinners. Some of the modern breeding policies being put forward and practised today are in some ways, to my mind, rather dangerous in that some breeds are selecting rams that are considered to be outstanding on growth rate and fat content and using them extensively across the whole breed by means of artificial insemination. In this I can see great danger. If something goes wrong within a flock genetically, only the flock is at risk but if a ram is being used right across a breed, the whole breed can be in danger. For it is quite common for hereditary faults to miss a generation and then reappear stronger than ever or, as that great Dorset Down shepherd, Frank Radford, used to say, "One jump to put it in and a lifetime to take it out."
The other great danger I see in this method is the importance of live weight gain, which I am sure has led to the feeding of excessive amounts of concentrates and the total housing of lambs, two practices which have no bearing on the commercial aspect of producing prime lamb for the meat trade. To me, live weight gain is only a reflection of the feeder's skill and what and how much he has to work with. If one could get reliable conversion figures, that would be the answer. What is the use of producing lambs with these outstanding live weight gains if it is entirely uneconomic to do so in the commercial world?
JOHN RANDALL
The easiest and most accurate method of assessing the above question is to look at the results achieved by the Southdown Breed over the last few centuries.
The Souhdown Sheep is native to the eastern chain of the South Downs - a series of chalk hills between Shoreham and Eastbourne. There was there a marked concentration of Southdowns from early Monastic days. This perennial nibbling of the downland turf resulted in a short, sweet grassland consisting of a fescue base with varying amounts of thyme, burnet, yarrow, trefoil and eyebright. The demise of the South Down Southdown flocks from about 1880 onwards proved their impact on downland conservation. There is now a minimal amount of downland turf surviving. As the author Bob Copper of Rottingdean writes in his book "Early to Rise" (concerning the mid-1920s) "once sweet, close-bitten turf on the downs (now) growing rank and scrubby....All part of the general decline in farming fortunes."
There are still a few downland flocks of pedigree Southdowns and their ancient grazing habits can be relied on to create and conserve permanent pastures of the downland turf. The Southdown can graze minutely if required. As a breed, it is famous for its centuries old "fold tolerance". This means that it is remarkably happy to be confined to small areas (folds), provided, of course, that there is a sufficiency of keep and water. Like all sheep the Southdown cannot tolerate dog-abuse.
It is difficult to isolate "negative" features. It is necessary to avoid small, short-legged Southdowns, as they are prone to "casting", which occurs when they roll on their backs and cannot upright themselves. Again, Southdowns should not be over-fed, as they are "good doers" and convert excess feed to fat.
PAUL WAKEHAM-DAWSON M.A.Dip.Agric.(Cambridge)
Many people have commented to me about the time that they spend treating foot rot in their sheep. I used to be the same until I lost patience with "Terramycin" and other sprays and changed over to zinc foot bath solution. (I use "Golden Hoof" foot bath solution). The expensive part of this is the bath and race, but I made my race out of timber to save money.
The sheep need to stand in the solution for over two minutes. The easiest way to do this is to put the first foot-trimmed sheep into the foot bath to soak while you catch and trim the feet of the next animal, release the first animal and replace it with the second. You will find this will take about four minutes per animal, which gives each of them a good soak.
I also feed a sheep mineral rich in zinc. This mineral is required by the body for growth of hair, skin, and horn and I am informed that all soils in the British Isles are deficient in this mineral. Improvements to horn and resistance to foot rot does take time (up to twelve months), but are well worth waiting for.
In very serious cases I will, of course, use an antibiotic, but I rarely have to do this now. The other treatment I use is a homeopathic foot rot nosode 30c. A few drops are placed in the water trough and stirred well, every two weeks during times of a likely outbreak. Nosodes are produced from diseased tissue, diluted until there is no traceable amount in the solution. It still has the capability of increasing the sheeps' resistance to the disease.
My main foot treatment times are during the period the ewes are being prepared for tupping and then just after lambing, before I turn the ewes and lambs out of their pens on to a new pasture.
For all these fine treatments, there is no substitute for selecting your breeding sheep for good, hard, well-formed hooves with a family history of foot rot resistance.
GEORGE ELLIOTT, GOLDEN CAP FLOCK
Southdown sheep are really very easy to keep. They are very docile and quite intelligent, I believe. I have heard tales of novice shepherds who have purchased one of the breeds of hill sheep and are unable to get anywhere near them to worm them or trim their feet. I read that these people should have taken a photograph of the sheep as soon as they had unloaded them, because they would not see them that close ever again. No such problems with Southdowns, in fact quite the reverse; I find it difficult to walk around our fields without being mobbed, and one of our rams loves to pose for the camera!
As well as Southdowns, I keep a few other breeds which are put to a Southdown ram. Their lambs mature quickly and grade well but I prefer the pedigree lambs. To any would-be shepherds reading this, I can say BUY some SOUTHDOWNS and see for yourself. I know that they are not fashionable with the majority of commercial farmers, but they do have a lot to offer. They are quiet and easy to handle, they are not in the habit of escaping, they are excellent mothers which means the lambs grow well, and, finally, they taste delicious. The disadvantages? I'm sorry, I can't think of any.
I have used the following remedies successfully as an alternative to, or as an accompaniment to, conventional drugs:
ORF NOSODE: Give three drops twice daily to individual sheep with Orf, and put 10 ml. into drinking water once a week as a preventative.
OSMOND'S EEZYBIRTH SPRAY: Spray into mouth of ewes about to lamb. I found this very helpful for shearling ewes; it relaxes them physically and mentally!
BICARBONATE OF SODA: Put 2 oz into a bucket of water. Used for treating scouring due to rich spring grass.
NATURAL YOGURT: Also used for treating scouring and have successfully treated lambs with watery mouth (after they had received an antibiotic) 5-10 ml. twice daily by dosing syringe.
TEA TREE SPRAY: Excellent on minor shearing cuts, as it also repels flies.
MRS. LYNNE BROOKS
A lot of Southdown breeders, like ourselves, only have a small flock and are inclined to keep some of their favourite sheep for many years. As the sheep get older they may become arthritic and we have found that a daily dose of anti-inflammatory powder, mixed in with their feed, is effective in easing aching joints.
We only use this powder for a short period, not continuously.
MARION HART