DAIRY ALEXANDROVSKIE SHEEPS - HOW I CONTAIN THEM

Several years ago, intending to start dairy cattle, I drew attention to information about the richest composition of sheep's milk.

Many famous European cheeses are made from it. In Russia, such a valuable product is practically not on sale. All this determined my decision to buy dairy sheep.

SEARCHED FOR THE WHOLE COUNTRY, AND FOUND UNDER THE SIDE

The search for sheep with good milks turned into a whole epic. Ad websites and calls across the country did not give the desired results. Domestic breeds of sheep with good milks in the literature did not figure. The survey of owners of prolific Romanov sheep was also not encouraging. Importers of dairy goats and ornamental animals from Europe offered sheep of Ostfries breed. True, they warned that in the Russian climate these animals often get sick and do not give much milk. It seemed that all options were exhausted. And then I came across an announcement about the sale of lambs in our region, called the seller "alexandra sheep". The text said that these sheep can be milked. Having phoned the owner, I went to him.

When I saw the herd, I immediately realized that I had found something interesting. Most of the ewes had a very solid udder. The seller confirmed the good milkiness of the sheep, but admitted that his elderly age prevents him from milking regularly.

Very interesting was the story of the history of these animals. At the turn of the XIX and XX centuries. the population was distributed in the triangle between the villages of Aleksandrovsk Kundruchensky (now the village of Proletarka), Aleksandrovsk Hrushevsky (now Shakhty) and Krasny Sulin. After the revolution, the cattle were gathered in a local collective farm. During the Soviet era, the number of sheep in the herd fluctuated between 200 and 300 fleets. But in 1994, the flock was put under the knife. One employee took the last cat's uterus. All the present sheep of this variety are born from it and soon born female.

Since there was no such male, the new owner once received a cross-breeding offspring from a large Romanov ram. Further, using males of the following generations and two initial queens, "washed out" Romanov's blood. As a result, he achieved almost complete return of offspring to the original animals in appearance, size and productivity. Such closely related crossings did not give either deformities, or weakening, or chopping of sheep. Apparently, because of the small number of groups in its genotype, by lucky chance, lethal or depressant genes did not hit.

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See also: Romanovskie sheep - breed breeding

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Aged, the breeder passed the baton to the same enthusiast. He kept a herd of 10-15 adult animals for many years. It was from him that I acquired my first sheep - a young lamb and two small animals.

This group of animals is very small and created by popular selection. You can not call it a breed in the official sense of the word. Therefore, I use the terms "group", "variety" and "population". Sheep refers to a universal type of productivity. Initially attracting the attention of the noticeable milkiness of most females, later the Alexandrovic multifaceted showed good meat and wool productivity.

INCOME ARTICLES - MEAT, MILK AND WOOL

Alexander’s sheep are slightly higher than Romanov’s legs, slimmer. The growth at the withers of the sheep living in our farm is 76 cm, the females are 7-10 cm lower than it. The more dairy uteri are longer and taller than the milky ones. The cattle are hornless from birth, although rams have rudiments of horns up to 1,5 cm long.

You can feel them when palpating, outwardly they are invisible. Aquiline nose. The coat is of a classic white color throughout the body, except for the withers, where most animals have a small brown spot. Relatively rarely (not more than 20% of cases) animals are born with small dark spots on their legs. According to the breeder who sold me the sheep, the spots on the legs are the last "hello" from the ancestral Romanov breed. Such animals, in his opinion, should be discarded. There is an observation that sheep, atypical in color and physique, are less dairy.

At the age of 100 days, when the farm is slaughtered, the young stock weighs 26-30 kg. In this case, lambs do not receive concentrates, only maternal milk, hay and grass from pasture in the diet. Cumulatively, the grazing time does not exceed 4 h (2 h in the morning and in the evening). It turns out that the growth rates of sheep at a young age do not lag behind the meat of the Edilbaev breed. Of course, in the future this speed decreases. We have not yet slaughtered adult animals, but according to body measurements, a sheep weighs in the region of 70 kg, and sheep - 60-65 kg.

In the first year of sheep maintenance, we did not measure their milk content. Just once a day milked the queens, feeding the offspring in a free regime. The following year, one of the adult sheep was sold along with its offspring and young from the second sheep. They left their uterus and one of her three daughters. Now we fix the milk. It turns out that with the joint maintenance of the uterus with a monthly lamb with free access to the udder, a double milking gives us 3-3,1 l of milk per day.

The average fertility of the queens in our farm is a little more than 2 lambs per uterus. Give birth, without our help. Most often, we leave the lambs with their mother in the common herd before slaughter (up to 100 days). Maternal qualities of the uterus are good, there have been no refuseniks yet. The breeder, who sold us animals, mentioned that such cases of these sheep are extremely rare. He had an average fertility of more than 2,5 lamb per lamb. Sometimes he took away lambs at an early age, and then most of the queens brought the litter a second time.

Our sheep are coarse-haired. We cut the sheep three times a year, receiving about 11 kg of wool during this period. Females bring 7 kg of wool (haircut - 2 times a year). During the clipping and trimming of the hooves, the ram stands quietly, it is not required to bring it down to the ground, hold and tie it. We can say that our animals are tame. You need to communicate with bright ones more often, iron the udder, accustoming you to future milking. In general, the same approach as for goats and cows.

The products obtained from our small herd are highly profitable. Year-round sheep graze in the pasture, in the winter they additionally get hay, a little purification of vegetables and Jerusalem artichoke. Also in the diet include fodder salt and the feed. Grain and mixed fodder are not used in the farm. We consume meat ourselves, drink fresh milk, prepare cottage cheese and cheeses.

We collected wool in bags and stored, because we thought that nobody needed it. But last year they tried to sell the accumulated unwashed wool. Orders poured in one after another from all over the country. The main buyers are people involved in felting and knitting. Now it's the turn of the wool.

Our sheep are a profitable household item. They give a lot of meat, milk, wool, and the benefit from their content is even higher than from the goats living with us. Now in the country there is a demand for dairy sheep, mainly due to the popularity of craft (craft) cheeses. All the lambs this year have been bought by a dairy farm. There are orders for young animals. And against the background of the high cost of unpretentiousness of foreign dairy sheep, our animals are quite promising.

WHERE DO THE CHILD LAY?

We didn’t sell wool for a long time, because all of us convinced us that you wouldn’t sell it, they say that nobody needs it, the time of public procurement and the procurement office have passed ... We listened and nodded. But since we actively use the Internet and deal with many bloggers, members and groups of social networks, we occasionally come across people who themselves make wool products. It turned out that many people sew, knit and sell their goods, finding buyers through the Internet.

Especially popular in recent years are felted out of wool toys and clothes. For example, fairly simple slippers cost about 5000 rub. We assumed that all these sellers of felted products should take fur somewhere. Have inquired. It turned out that special shops for handicrafts sell wool for yarn, down, thread is very expensive. And the niche of selling such raw materials is practically not occupied.

Then we decided to advertise on the sale of wool with the indication of the possibility to send the goods by mail to other regions. Literally for a couple of days, all our wool (and then it was more than 20 kg) was bought. And for a long time there were calls, people expressed a desire to buy regularly and everything that we cut. There were even two offers from wholesalers ready to buy from 10 t of wool.

As it turned out, over the years of talking about the fact that the wool is not in demand, the situation has changed. There is demand for it, but there is no offer. Our friends throw their wool into the dump. We are selling.

© Author: V. MATUYEV Rostov Region

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See also: How to shear a sheep yourself

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COMMENTS OF THE SPECIALIST

The idea is good, but it is wrongly executed. Two breeds participate in breeding, but in the wrong proportion. If you look at the indicators of the new population, you will see that there is a decline in productivity in some parameters (for example, fertility is declining). Without the infusion of the blood of other sheep (ostrichoz or any other dairy breed), this population will soon turn into a white Romanov.

That is, in this case, there is a simple effect of heterosis - a hybrid power of the first generation, when crossing different breeds, lines, species of animals or plants. The effect of heterosis manifests itself strongly only in the first generation (it can continue to appear if new breeds, lines, species are introduced, that is, three-breed crosses are used), and then sharply decreases with each generation. But the situation can be corrected.

L. STEPANOVA, zootechnician-breeder

SHEEP "ALEXANDER MULTI-FULL". RARE BREEDS SHEEP. VIDEO

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