If you want more lambs from wool sheep, shear them
Sheep with overgrown wool on a farm in Narok County.
Wool sheep used to be common livestock in Kenya during the colonial era and up to the late 80s. There were large sheep farms as well as small-scale producers in the cool parts of the country. Wool sheep are mainly kept for meat, leather and wool.
Wool is a very special textile raw material that makes highly-priced clothes. The collapse of the local textile industry due to the importation of second-hand clothes coupled with the subdivision of farms into smaller units due to rapid population growth sounded the death knell on wool sheep farming.
Sheep are much smaller than cattle but they are highly specialised grazers. They easily beat cattle in the competition for grazing pastures. Due to their small muzzles and sharp incisor teeth, sheep can trim grass very close to the ground. In fact, they are nick-named lawnmowers.
Presently, wool sheep are found in Kenya in relatively large numbers in some of the highlands in Mt Kenya, Molo and Narok.
Last week, I visited a farm in Narok that rears wool sheep for mutton. The meat is not very popular in the country possibly due to the small number of wool sheep. When one talks of mutton, people think about meat from Dorper and Red Maasai sheep.
The complaint on the farm was that the sheep were not breeding. I met George, the farm’s manager and he said there were two lots of sheep. The fattening lot had 74 while the breeding one had 128. The fattening lot was breeding well but the breeding one had very few lambs.
Fattening lot
We proceeded to the fattening lot. I noticed the sheep were a mixture of Dorper and Red Maasai, which are hair sheep and wool sheep like Corriedale, Merino, Romney and Hampshire. The herd coat characteristics for this lot tended to be moderate wool and hair. The sheep had not been shorn for some time but the wool and hair growth was moderately long.
I noted the sheep were in good body condition and free of parasites. Some of the sheep were also shedding off their coats naturally and minimising the need for shearing. Wool sheep or those with long hair should be sheared at least once every year.
The breeding lot of 128 sheep was a different story from the fattening one. The sheep were mainly mixtures of the wool sheep breeds Corriedale, Merino, Romney and Hampshire. They generally had very generous wool growth. I estimated the coat depth to the skin was about five inches on a thick carpet.
George informed me the sheep had not been sheared because the weather had been very cold for the previous five months. In addition, they had not seen the need to shear because there was no market for wool. There were too few lambs in the herd. This confirmed the farm’s complaint that the sheep in the herd were not breeding.
I found the ram to ewe ratio for the herd was one male for 20 females as is recommended. There also was no indication of disease for either the ewes or the rams. Both the rams and ewes were all in good body condition.
Finally, I examined the extent of cover of the external reproductive organs of the males and females. For effective breeding of wool sheep, the vulva in the ewe and the opening of the prepuce in the ram must be clear of wool obstruction.
I diagnosed full wool dressing in the sheep. Most of the ewes were heavily covered with wool in the rear end making it impossible for mating to occur. The rams must have been a frustrated lot. Further, rams had lots of wool covering the opening of the prepuce. The wool obstruction in both the males and the females made breeding impossible.
Breeding problem
George could not help laughing at the simplicity of the breeding problem. I explained to him that breeding failure in sheep may arise from many factors but the first step was to correct the physical mating obstruction that was evident. If breeding failure still persisted, I would carry out further investigations.
Shearing serves five main purposes for the sheep and the farmer. When there is market for the wool, also called fleece, the farmer makes income from the sale of the product while the sheep is still alive.
For the sheep, wool overgrowth may cause overheating, heat stroke and death, especially during the hot season. Overgrown wool attracts pests, parasites and bacteria that live in the matted coat, damage the skin and cause infections. Shearing also improves the safety and security of the sheep. Heavy wool growth may get the sheep stuck in the woods or fences, exposing the animal to injury or attack by predators.
I advised George to tag and ring the sheep to expose their external reproductive organs. Tagging is the shearing of the wool from the rear area of the ewe. It is done when full body shearing may not be done in time for the breeding.
Ringing on the other hand refers to the shearing of the wool of the ram from the neck, the belly and the area around the opening of the prepuce. But ideally, both the ewes and the rams should be shorn completely before the breeding season.
