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Ewe milking in 4 teats...cull or breed?

  • 07-04-2019 9:23pm
    #1
    Neddyusa
    Registered Users Posts: 1,051 ✭✭✭


    Have a 3 year old Texal X ewe dropped here on Friday that has a nice drop of milk in the front - what we'd usually call blind - two tits!

    I never came across this before in a ewe. I often see ones here with larger than normal blind tits but to be honest never tried to milk them.
    What prompted me to draw them was that the lambs were sucking continuously at these "blind" tits so I drew one and to my surprise there came a nice gush of biestings! Now the ewe has a big elder and lots of milk in the normal tits.

    So, sheep people of Boards; how common is this, and would you breed her ewe lambs?
    She is a nice maternal ewe and reared a good set of twins the past two years.


Comments

  • #2
    Buford T. Justice XIX
    Closed Accounts Posts: 20,633 ✭✭✭✭Buford T. Justice XIX


    Neddyusa wrote: »
    Have a 3 year old Texal X ewe dropped here on Friday that has a nice drop of milk in the front - what we'd usually call blind - two tits!

    I never came across this before in a ewe. I often see ones here with larger than normal blind tits but to be honest never tried to milk them.
    What prompted me to draw them was that the lambs were sucking continuously at these "blind" tits so I drew one and to my surprise there came a nice gush of biestings! Now the ewe has a big elder and lots of milk in the normal tits.

    So, sheep people of Boards; how common is this, and would you breed her ewe lambs?
    She is a nice maternal ewe and reared a good set of twins the past two years.

    It's quite common, iirc. The ewes are supposed to be more prolific than 2 teat ewes but I haven't seen much scientific proof on that. There was some famous American or British man that had a flock of 4 teat ewes but I can't remember their name (and Google is throwing up some very NSFW stories with nothing to do with my search terms:eek:)

    I'd breed her away, at least if she loses a teat you'll still have loads more for her lambs.


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