One of the things we inherited from the previous owner D was a flock of 102 ram lambs that had been kept for classing into breeding rams or to be sold for mutton. We took a decision early on that it was too time consuming, and wasteful of grazing to hold back so many ram lambs to breed our own production rams. We therefore decided to begin a programme of purchasing pedigree rams instead of using our own rams for breeding. The idea was to replace the ram flock on an as an when basis. The first two stud rams purchased were Big Joe and Bulldozer. They came from the Sneeuberg Dohne Merinos Stud from Graaff-Reneit. They cost a great deal of money, but the benefit of quality, time saving and the fact we did not have to keep back so many ram lambs for classing made it worthwhile.
Over time we have bought rams from other studs, replacing those that were old, and those that had died for whatever reason. About half of our ram flock now comprises pedigree rams. Our most recent purchases came from a new stud near Molteno. We went there with the specific idea of "window shopping", but took the 4 x 4 and trailer in case. Since the rams were of excellent quality, and the prices were right we bought 5!
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