Domestic Sheep Reproduction - Commercial Sheep Breeding

Commercial Sheep Breeding

In the large sheep producing nations of South America, Australia and New Zealand sheep are usually bred on large tracts of land with much less intervention from the graziers or breeders. Merinos, and much of the land in these countries does not lend itself to the mob intervention that is found in smaller flock breeding countries. In these countries there is little need, and no option but for ewes to lamb outdoors as there are insufficient structures to handle the large flocks of ewes there. New Zealand ewes produce 36 million lambs each spring time, which is an average of 2,250 lambs per farm. Australian graziers, too, do not receive the financial support that governments in other countries provide to sheep breeders. Low-cost sheep breeding is based on large numbers of sheep per labour unit and having ewes that are capable of unsupervised lambing to produce hardy, active lambs.