• I am an honest, straight up and direct breeder, who will always give you honest answers.  No bullshit or marketing gimmicks at Waidale.   I have placed  this first because I consider this to be the most important thing you need to establish before you even look at the rams, let alone select what rams you buy.   There are too many breeders today who are marketing various attributes which when you evaluate and critique what they are saying, often do not stack up. 

In an ideal world, I  personally would like all potential clients to come and visit Waidale, ask many varied questions of me so that you can assess me as a person.  If you feel you are being snowballed about anything from any breeder, you should dismiss them immediately as a supplier of rams.  This not only applies to the breeder you select but also to the ever increasing multitude of farm consultants, sales and marketing managers that out there promoting a breeder's rams.  If you cannot trust the person you are buying ramsfrom, how can you have confidence in the rams they are supplying you or indeed the data they provide on those rams.

• 40 years of successfully breeding romney rams to meet the market's needs.  The performance of the Waidale flock has always been steadily improving. 

  At Waidale we focus on what we consider the big three, fertility, growth rates and meat yeild.

   Fertility:

  We  ensure that any sires we have identified to retain in stud as a sire, also meet a basic threshold in terms of fertility. We will not use a poor fertility ram.  

  Any sire we decide to buy not only has to look the part, it must have figures that will mean our fertility is not pulled back, and preferably move us ahead, otherwise we wont buy it.

  We will not keep a ewe that has two singles in a row, she is culled completely or put to a terminal sire.  This ensures that every animal on the farm has a minimum fertility potential of 150%. 

  We place emphasis on weaning percentages, not so much scanning, as what is important, is what goes out the gate, 220% scanning is waste of time if you only wean 120%.  Just recently (april 2005)we have agreed to be involved in a Lincoln Universitys cold tolerance project, which hopefully will assist us identifying what sires have these genes that have a greater cold tolerance, we shall see.

  Further it is important to understand the history of your breeder:

What they have been doing, and have they been truly and consistently improving. It goes without saying for instance if a breeders production figures have been steadily declining over period of time, that you should not buy rams off that person.  While on the other hand if they have been steadily improving, then you have some certainty as to what may happen to that flock if purchase that persons rams. 

This is particularly relevant today with the advent of what many call corporate breeders, these corporates either sell a different strain of some purebred or more commonly sell various mixes of breeds (ie composites) and often have not been on the scene for more than 5 years and/or still introducing outside blood into their composites.  If you buy such rams then (almost irrespective of the quality of the ram you use) you will get an increase in production in the short term.  Why? The answer is quite simply HYBRID VIGOUR.

However unless you either maintain a quality purebred base to continually benefit from hybrid vigour or ensure you are buying rams that truly have the genetics, then it is inevitable that your production will taper off and, if you do nothing, actually decline to a point that could be worse than you started with. (I am looking long term, over  a period of at least 10 years, Trevor Cook the consultant and vet terms this as consistency), when the majority of the ewes will consist of the second and third generation of such rams. No hybrid vigour gains then.

You only have to look at my Southdown South Suffolk cross lambs this year, they are truly quite exceptional in terms of the hindquarter, loin etc.  However while I know that I used a very good southdown over very good South suffolk ewes, I cannot tell you what is attributable to Hybrid Vigour and what is attributable to superior genetics.  Obviously with terminal sires the argument is not as important, as you are almost always utilising hybrid vigour gains given that you do not keep such offspring as future capital stock.

In all the promotion I have heard and read, I have yet to find someone who can proportion out what production gains are attibutable to hybrid vigour, and what is actually attributable to superior genetics. There are many claims but all to date that I have seen are unsubstantiated.  The longer such mixes have been around and crossed amongst themselves by the breeders themselves to effectively form a new breed (without the introduction of another breed), then there should be no excuse not to provide you with long term production data that continues to improve.

• Waidale rams have pedigrees that are as accurate as I can get, this accuracy is a result of tagging lambs at birth and not leaving them until tailing.  This accuracy translates into SIL breeding values that have merit and some meaning for you, the client.  

As most of us know the lambs born to a ewe are not necessarily the same lamb or lambs a ewe raises to tailing and weaning.  There are many breeders who today claim that they do not shepherd theirflocks, that they record the sire and dam of the lamb (ie tag it) at tailing time and at the same time they heavily promote the fact that their flock is on SIL.  If you tag at birth then you are ensuring that you are recording that lamb's lineage as accurate as possible, however the longer you leave the greater likelihood that you are recording it wrong. 

 Why is this important? It is important because SIL Breeding values take into account all the available information on the individual animal concerned and their relatives and take into consideration the relationship (correlation) between traits.  Therefore the more accurate the breeder's pedigrees, the more confidence a client can have in the Breeding Values SIL calculates.  Some will say the inaccuracy is not significant, I would dispute that on the basis, that it could be as much as 10% worse than tagging at birth and that breeders have a duty to the clients to record pedigrees as accurately as possible.  It is possible to tag at birth, but not assist, or alternatively record those ewes and lambs that have problems and record them, this is what I do,  I had six problem lambers out of a thousand last year.

• Extensive performance recording including weaning weights, 200 day weights, hogget fleece weights, eye muscle scanning and fertility (lambs born, survival, lambs weaned) which assist you in selecting the rams that will increase your income.

• SIL Breeding Values that assist both you and I to produce Romney rams with the genetics that ultimately leads to greater financial returns for you!

• Waidale Rams have the genetics to provide you with greater financial returns: The Key Performance Indicators (KPI'S) used at Waidale (in tandem with SIL) being:: 

NB=We were hit with Salmonella Brandenberg in 2003, with around 10% of our flock aborting

•  We are committed to breeding: :