RUINED???

[Lenajo]

I looked for a Suffolk for a terminal sire in this state and could only find show breeders. One of the most prominent and well known was frankly honest with me..."you don't want this" in regards to terminal sire for pasture lambs.

 

He told me they bred for: large single lambs, very small shoulders, long necks, and as little ruman volume as possible. On pasture these sheep would starve, and the large single lambs would kill most breeds that were smaller. The shoulders are so small that you can't expect good "front end" cuts when slaughtering either, just low meat/bony waste. The necks...just "what they want".

 

This guy's lambs have sold for as high as 10K each. For *children* to show and enjoy.

[Bill Fosher]

Hi Rebecca,

 

Nothing at all is coming in from the UK as far as I know -- not even semen or embryoes. If/when the UK regains its FMD free status, I think you can bring in semen; not sure about embryoes. There are also some nice Suffolks in Canada, but that border is closed as well.

 

PSmitty,

 

Notice that in the UK the Suffolks that win show an abundance of stuff you can eat -- muscle. The ones that win here don't.

[juliepoudrier]

PSmitty,

 

Notice that in the UK the Suffolks that win show an abundance of stuff you can eat -- muscle. The ones that win here don't.

Well of course not. Showing sheep here no longer has any basis in the reality of real farming or what people might actually want to eat. That's why the show sheep can get away with being such "mutants;" they don't have any real useful purpose beyond the show ring (an all-too-familiar story).

 

J.

[donna frankland (uk)]

i was shocked looking at those pics of the US suffolks!

if it hadnt beed stated what breed they were i would never have guessed, and where i live its almost impossible to take a walk withouts seeing a field of suffolk sheep

[ItsADogsLyfe]

at the county fair in so ca where I used to live, the only breed of sheep you'd see were the long legged Suffolks. The leggier the better for show I guess. I'd see the kids with their sheep on lead sitting on the tailgates of their parents trucks running the sheep up and down the road.

[Bill Fosher]

No sense in having the kids get any exercise, eh?

[Zoe]

Those photos were really shocking ! I can't understand why the breeding of animals is being done for what seems like a competition based on aesthetics which have nothing to do with purpose or function.

Not to mention what is done to achieve those ends......

 

 

Rebecca, quote:

 

How do Americans manage to screw up everything we touch?

 

The BC boards are American and the vast majority of the wonderful people doing great work on the BC Boards are American. No country has a monopoly on screwing stuff up

[Sue R]

I can't understand why the breeding of animals is being done for what seems like a competition based on aesthetics which have nothing to do with purpose or function.

 

Can we say, "AKC conformation" dog showing?

 

While the purpose of "showing" should be to showcase top-quality genetics, it has really become something else, whether it's dogs or stock. It's showcasing form (even when that isn't anything to do with good husbandry or practicality or usefulness) rather than function.

 

There's a strong commonality here when competition in the show ring (and perhaps other competitive venues) occurs for many species, and it seems to be driven by ego not the improvement of a useful domestic species.

[Eileen Stein]

My shearer is from the UK, and we have had a number of conversations about the phenomenon of the expanding Suffolk. I guess that is mostly what he shears, and wrestling animals that size is apparently not something he enjoys. He seems to think it's another bemusing example of Americans thinking that bigger (for its own sake) is better, and that the shows are a vehicle for making that predilection a reality.

 

It's a good example of how conformation shows tend to produce results that undermine their supposed purpose.

[Sue R]

It's a good example of how conformation shows tend to produce results that undermine their supposed purpose.

 

Precisely.

[philologus]

I looked at the pics of US "Suffolks" and didn't recognise them.

I am used to seeing Suffolks in the fields near where I live and I have yet to see anything even faintly resembling those pics.

What have you done to them?

[DixiesDad]

If you want to see where the fad will take you look at the Quarter Horse. Pre late 1960's it stood an average of 14 hands, max 14.2. Fastest thing in a 1/4 mile and did 180 in it's on lenght. Then the idea that bigger is better. Now we have 16+ hand yearligs at over a 1000 lbs. Yea they might look great but no athletic ability. Their knees aren't grown together and tendons that are too short. This is where the constatnt quest to win at all costs sometimes takes us. This is where other breeds are at or heading to.

[Guest Freckles LaLa Mom]

I MUST get out more.......sheesh dam city girl

[G. Festerling]

If you want to see where the fad will take you look at the Quarter Horse. Pre late 1960's it stood an average of 14 hands, max 14.2. Fastest thing in a 1/4 mile and did 180 in it's on lenght. Then the idea that bigger is better. Now we have 16+ hand yearligs at over a 1000 lbs. Yea they might look great but no athletic ability. Their knees aren't grown together and tendons that are too short. This is where the constatnt quest to win at all costs sometimes takes us. This is where other breeds are at or heading to.

 

I had a long post written about the exact same thing. Including the conformation dog shows etc.

 

What ever happend to the old idea of "form to function"? The orignial idea behind the conformation classes?

I love breedstandards....because when they first come up with them it was for a reason....now everyone quotes them but forgets what the reason was.....

 

True story, a while ago, many years we were moving cattle along a railroad track in Canada. Just from one pasture to another only about a half a mile. I was on a young halter filly. Just started, very good minded but...when the train showed up...guess who was bringing up the rear? Definetly not the form to function well in that case!

[Jenny Holden]

Good grief! This is horrific!

I just joined the boards yesterday and this is one of the first threads I've read.

I don't get it, I show sheep in the UK (mostly rare breed) and, in sheep at least, they are still judged on their form AND function.

We use Suffolks here in the Lake District as terminal sires and see them every day, I was shocked to see what has happened to them.

I've also never heard of "tracking." How ridiculous.

Makes you glad to be small and English (No offense intended to anyone but the idiots who are ruining a good old breed.

 

Jenny

[Jenny Holden]

I hope that he isn't ruined, that would be a great shame for the dog no matter what I think of this "tracking" thing that you intend him for.

My BC, Fox, was startled by a horse at 5 months old (he's now 16 months). He was at an agricultural fair with me, (getting socialised, how ironic!)

when one of my friends cantered up on her horse.

 

Even though Fox had often seen horses before (I ride and he had wandered about the stables with some of his pup pals) he just freaked.

Ever since then he has hated them! I'm sure that he's frightened, but Fox is such a lad! his response to a challenge that scares him is to throw

himself right into the middle and get the first punch in.

He has always been like that, even though 99% of the time you wouldn't believe that there was an aggressive bone in him.

 

At first he would simply be beside himself barking and growling whenever one went past, but we've been working through it and he's getting better.

It's horses with riders that trigger him the worst so we started with horses grazing peacefully and moved up. For the first time in months a horse

rode past us yesterday and he didn't even grumble. I still wouldn't have him off a lead near a horse though.

 

It takes a lot of time and patience to get them through it and I found it difficult to know whether to ignore his behaviour, correct him or reassure him.

I didn't want him to think that I thought horses were a big issue too!

 

how would others have gone about it?

 

Jenny

[Bill Fosher]

Hi Jenny,

 

The US Suffolk has gotten so bad that very few of them are used in crossbreeding as terminal sires anymore. Our range producers (similar to your hill farms) gave up on them, becuase most of them couldnt' survive a breeding season on the range, and those that did bred very few ewes. And the lambs tended to be very large (difficult birth), logey (the opposite of vigorous), and more than happily willing to die.

 

How did we get to this stage in the show sheep world here in the US? Pretty easy, actually. The folks who judge sheep shows started to put a premium on big sheep because the packers were telling them that the only way to make money on a lamb was to have a 70 to 80 lb carcass. (More salable product from the same overhead labor of killing, gutting and skinning a lamb.) That means a lamb that finishes at 150 to 170 lbs liveweight. That means adult ewes of 225 to 250 pounds, and rams of 300 to 400 lbs. Pretty simple math.

 

Breeders started making that kind of sheep by hook or by crook. So eventually in the breeding sheep class, it was no longer enough to select the biggest ewe. They had to look for another trait to differentiate between the monsters. And they chose "wastefulness" as a negative trait. Wastefulness was defined as a gut. So we ended up with 240 lb ewes that had no rumen capacity whatsoever, and 350 lb rams that can't live without constant access to a grain bin.

 

Essentially, we tried to turn the sheep into a market hog, and more or less succeeded.

 

Of course, these "gains" came at a cost. Musculature declined as frame was added. Lambs became precious and intervention and assistance with lambing ewes became the norm rather than the exception. Show sheep lost the ability to shift for themselves on anything but the very best pasture.

 

I have some very convoluted ideas about the culture behind this decision. We have lots of land and no particular reason to promote a species of food animal that can make use of poorer ground. Second, we have a governement farm policy that promotes the production of grain at prices well below the cost of production via subsidies. Labor, and particularly skilled farm labor, has been in increasingly short supply since the outset of the second world war, and you don't need a particularly skilled shepherd to fill a grain feeder.

 

I could go on, but I'll spare you. Suffice it to say that the show sheep world in the US has become its own business. It's self-referential, and has next to no bearing on commercial sheep production. The schisms in some breeds -- particularly the polled Dorset -- is so deep between show and commercial sheep that the two are not even recognizable as the same sheep.

[madvibes]

I know i'm a bit late on this reply, but my first thought was that at 6 months, your Shep might have been in a fear period of socialization. During these periods, it's usually not a good move to expose them to much (if anything).

 

* Between seven to nine weeks of age

* Anywhere from four to six months

* Again at around 12 months

* At approximately 14 to 18 months and with some dogs can even be as late as 2 years