30 YEARS OF FINN CROSSES ON A WESTERN COMMERCIAL OPERATION

By Richard Hamilton, Hamilton Bros. Ranch, Rio Vista, CA

My family has been involved in CA agriculture (including sheep) for close to 150 years.  I'm a fourth generation farmer/rancher. We grow wheat, barley, corn, sugar beets, alfalfa, tomatoes, pears, safflower; raise cattle and run around 4,000 whiteface commercial ewes (which are a 3/8Finn 3/8Targhee 1/4 Rambouillet cross) and we also have about100 registered Suffolk ewes.

Most producers don't understand what the capabilities of the Finn sheep are. Most breeders won't believe you in terms of production. Plus, they also stereotype a Finn as not being a breed of sheep that is compatible in the Western sheep operation, which is wrong. The unique thing about the Finn is that you can incorporate the % of Finn sheep you need to work in your operation. If your production system doesn't work for twins maybe just adding 1/16 to 1/8 Finn could help cut down your open ewes and increase the mothering ability of your ewes.

 The use of breeds like Finnsheep and combinations of breeds to make a better more productive sheep for a given area is one of the most underused tools in our industry. When my father started using Finns in 1970, we were having between 10 to 13% open ewes and not getting enough twins to cover that inefficiency.  Even today California's lambing % is only around 90%. He came to the conclusion that the traditional range ewe in our area couldn't be productive enough to meet the ever changing demands of the sheep industry in our area. People criticized and made quick judgements on his use of the Finn, because they looked a little different, but again they really didn't understand what he was using the Finn for and how he was going to use a selection program to develop the traits that he felt were most desirable for our operation. Most producers don't understand or don't have the patience to appreciate the time it takes to make progress in a selection program. Producers want it all in the F1 and don't realize it might be in the F3 or F4 that they see the progress they want. So, these producers keep jumping to different breeds and different type of sheep and overall they are making an inconsistent, non-uniform product with all the changes. There is another range producer in California, who uses the Polypay as his genetic base. His neighbors will bad mouth his sheep as carpet wool sheep but what is neighbors don't get is that with the polypay genetics and under the same conditions he is getting 50% more lambs and 15% less open ewes for the different in price of 20-21 micron wool of his neighbors against his 23 -24 micron wool. Just using a new breed doesn't make for all the changes, you have to have goals of what you want your end product to be and use selection along with genetics to make the changes. Plus, the most critical thing to remember is how the changes you make through selection and new genetics affect the utilization of your resources and are they efficient in today's competitive market.  If you look at our Finn cross of the early 1970's against our Finn cross today, you will see a different sheep. Our main goal was to have a ewe that we could cross on a Suffolk ram and raise two lambs and have those lambs at the size and quality of what the processor wants in a typical CA lamb. Today, that is a Yield 2 lamb of 135 to 140 lbs and both straight Finn cross and terminal cross lambs achieve that goal.

We produced a 1/4 Finn cross sheep until 1985 and at that point both my father and I felt we needed to introduce some new genetics in our sheep. In breeding the 1/4 Finn cross , we only used genetics from our original sources of Finn sheep and we never used a Polypay. The reason for our nonuse of the Polypay is that we felt through selection we made up the benefits of what a Polypay could bring us ,plus we felt our sheep were overall bigger and more consistent and finer in wool quality. If the Polypay were already developed as a breed when my dad made his change we would have used the Polypay, but we developed a plan with Dr. Eric Bradford of UC Davis and we didn't want to deviate from it. So, in 1986, my dad and I decided we could use more prolificacy in our sheep and we had found a source of 1/2 Finn-1/4 Targhee-1/4Rambouillet sheep in Montana that were selected in a similar manner to our sheep. We purchased 1/2 Finn-1/2 Targhee rams from Art Christensen and started to make a 3/8 Finn- 3/8 Targhee- 1/4 Rambouillet cross sheep. This is our present composite cross today. When we made the 3/8 Finn cross, we tested it for a few years to see how it did against our 1/4 Finn cross.

Our wool sells under the term "original bag". "Original bag" means that we produce enough wool that it doesn't need to be pooled with other producers' wool, so our wool sells as Hamilton Bros. Ranch wool and

how it sells depends on the quality and consistency of our micron reports. We do belong to a Cal Wool Marketing Assn., a coop, which acts as our selling agent. Even in bad wool markets, quality wool will sell before bad quality wool. We skirt and class our wool and it is marketed in 2 lines. Our A line is ~85% of our wool and it is a 62's clip which is 22.05 to 23.49 microns and our A1 line is a 60's clip which is 23.50 to 24.94 microns.

When people look at our 3/8 Finn cross, they can't believe that they have that much Finn in them based on their size, conformation and wool quality. What I tell people when they visit our ranch is that we developed our cross to work for our operation and that it might not work for you.  If you are going to take something from my experience, take the idea that there are a lot of tools available to help you make improvements to your operation, so you can be successful in the sheep industry.

The single most important thing to the success of my family's sheep operation has been the Finnsheep.  Without the benefits of the Finn, we couldn't have made the changes that we needed to make to have a chance to survive in a global market.

(Editor's note: The very first issue of Short Tales in 1980 featured an article on its from page about the Christensen Family of Montana from whom the Hamilton Brothers, above, bought their Finn/Targhee/Rambouillet crosses. The Christensen's bought their first Finns in 1972 and at the time Margaret Christensen wrote the article, had about 500 1/2 Finns, 1/2 Targhees.)