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Fashion: A form of ugly so hideous that it must be changed
every six months.
There are three camps regarding the significance of
the purebred/show industry to the commercial sheep raising enterprise.
The cynical school of thought is that they diverged into a “pure fashion
industry” and there is nothing that can be gained from them. The earnest
school of thought holds that the show ring is the one place where seedstock
buyers can see a head-to- head comparison of different bloodlines and
is therefore crucial to a profitable industry. The third school holds
forth that the purebreds are like paints of pure color that the commercial
shepherd can “mix” to achieve their unique objectives.
You need to know a few things about me to get a sense
of perspective. First, I used to own bell-bottom jeans, a (1) polyester
leisure suit, and platform shoes. So I know what if feels like to have
my pockets picked by the trendsetters and fashion mavens. I have 15 crossbred,
white-face ewes and a Suffolk terminal ram. My wife expects to net $400
per year for the kid’s college fund. I work in Process Control for a local
manufacturing plant, so I have more than a passing knowledge of statistics.
The latest round of show-vs.-commercial centers around
the extremes in size and height. An emerging trend seems to be growth
rate. Size and growth are related as growth rate and desirable carcass
quality (large cuts of meat with minimum fat cover) are highly correlated
to large adult body size. Large adults have large offspring with later
maturity.
Going boldly where no man has ever gone before has a
price. The “yellow dog” theory is that the toughest dog is a muddy, yellow
cur a little bigger than a coyote. Not suprisingly, that is about the
mean for the species. One pays a high price when one moves far from the
average for the species in terms of size. The price is particullarly high
as one increases size. Commercial sheep people call that price “the livibility
issue”.
This should not come as a suprise for anybody whose
livelihood is tied to a functional understanding of genetics. From a genetic
standpoint, prolonged, intense selection for a single attribute always
results in backsliding of all other attributes. That is why we do not
have a single breed of sheep as prolific as Finns, with Texel carcass
characteristis and Merino wool quality and quantity.
Still, I think there is a great deal of room for growth
in size of sheep. Compare the extremes in sizes for two other domestic
animals, dogs and horses. “Toy” breeds are less than 10 pounds. The biggest
breeds easily top 150 pounds. That is a fifteen-to-one ratio in weight.
Another way to look at the issue of maximum bodyweight is to look at the
weight of the wild precursors. A Great Dane weighs about three times as
much as our “yellow dog”. In fairness, it should be noted that the Great
Dane will only live half as long as the yellow dog.
It may not be fair to compare carnivors to herbivors
due to metabolic differences. Another difference is that breeders exert
much higher selection pressure on carnivors due to their large litters.
Consider horses. Ponies weigh about 300 pounds and draft
animals run upwards of 2000 pounds. That is a six-to-one ratio That Clydsdale
also weighs about two and a half times as much as its wild precursor.
Sheep, on the other hand range from 75 pounds (Romanov
ewes) to 250 pounds (Suffolk ewes) for a three-to-one ratio. And if my
Encyclopedia Britanica is correct, that Suffolk ewe weighs twice as much
as the wild mountain sheep of Pakistan. So, it sure looks to me like there
is a lot of room for upward growth on maximum sheep weight as long as
purebred breeders of terminal sires do not lose sight of livibility issues.
As a buyer of rams, I dealt with the issue of livibility
by asking my favorite Suffolk breeder for a ram lamb from the dam that
had produced the largest number of live (weaned) lambs in her life. This
criteria simultaneously combined long production life of the dam and the
livibility of her offspring. It also had the benefit of taking me a half
step back from the extremes of fashion. Sort of like buying last year’s
model off the lot.
(PS, I bought my ram from Alan Culham )
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