FOLLOWING last week’s report on the cancellation of the Ram Sale at this year’s Sheepvention, the question of a possible reinstatement in 2025 has been raised.
The decision of the Sheepvention Committee to cancel this year’s Ram Sale in the face of declining registration of vendors and sale lots to a level below 50 rams was widely seen as an unfortunate necessity.
However, several readers have approached this correspondent, expressing a general desire to have a return of the sale.
Most of those expressing this wish have been focussed on the loss of a point of human contact which the cancellation involves.
Last week, Sheepvention president, David Botterill stressed that the promotion of ram sales for next year was very much on the committee’s agenda and that alternative approaches would be discussed in the coming months.
With this in mind, The Spectator sought to investigate the possibility of one alternative which, on the face of it at least, makes sense.
This is to hold a terminal sire ram sale offering breeds such as Southdown, Hampshire Down, Poll Dorset as well as composite breeds and the perennial first cross sire Border Leicester.
Such a strategy would be a departure from the Merino-based ram sales which have been held since Sheepvention’s inception in 1979.
The main argument in favour of such a switch is that Hamilton now has much larger prime-lamb-producing ewe numbers compared with Merinos.
With this in mind, Sheepvention Ram Sale convenor, Will Crawford was contacted for his opinions.
He told The Spectator that a terminal sire ram sale had definitely been considered by the Sheepvention Committee which was very much open to the idea.
He stressed two points, the first of which was timing, in view of Sheepvention’s date in the first week of August.
Mr Crawford said, “It’s early in the (sheep-breeding) calendar and the studs need to be organised.”
He went on to point out that the joining of rams and ewes did not start until, at the very earliest, December with most ram sales being held in late Spring to reflect this.
The second point which Mr Crawford referred to was the rise of the on-property-online sale system and the growing popularity of the Auctions Plus platform.
In a similar vein, representatives of the two pastoral houses which conducted the Ram Sales, Elders and Nutrien (originally Dalgety) pointed to the growing presence of on-property-online ram sales but stressed that they were keen for the Ram Sale to return and were aware of its importance to Sheepvention.
Both were open to the concept of a terminal sire sale but were also cognisant of how early in the sheep-breeding year Sheepvention’s August anniversary is.
The pen of five flock rams
One feature of the Ram Sale which deserves a particular mention is the sale of a pen of five flock rams.
This innovation was the brainchild of the late Sandy MacKirdy a celebrated sheep classer from the Hamilton district.
The pen of five flock rams is an option system.
It is simple and is explained in the following example.
Let us say that a breeder has fifteen flock rams which he or she wishes to sell.
These are penned in three groups of 5 rams per pen and individually numbered.
Thus, rams with lot numbers 1 to 5 are in Pen A; rams 6 to 10 are in Pen B and so on.
The bidding starts and is on a dollars per ram basis.
The hammer falls on a price of, let’s say, $800 and the winning bidder is offered the option to take 1 to 5 rams at that $800 price.
If the bidder takes 3 rams these can be any permutation of the rams (lots 1 to 5) in that pen.
However, the winning bidder cannot take any of the rams in pen B.
The remaining rams in the pen are then put up for sale and the second winning bidder may then elect to take either one or two rams at the hammer price.
The beauty of this system is that bidders have an opportunity to buy the number of rams which they require but at the same time must “bid up” to ensure that they do not lose out to a purchaser who takes up the full five ram options on a series of pens.
In other words, there is a balance between competition and certainty.
Suitability to terminal sires
It is reasonable to hypothesise that the five ram option system would work just as well for meat sheep as it did for Merinos in the heyday of ram sales at Sheepvention and, by all accounts and in keeping with the August weather, these sales went swimmingly.
As to the problem of Sheepvention being much earlier in the year than the bulk of ram sales, there might just be a case to be made for scheduling this great event a few weeks later.
This would make it easier for studs to prepare rams for sale since they would be doing this in step with their on-property-online auctions.
It will be interesting to see what the Sheepvention Committee and the Pastoral Houses come up with.
It might be time for some bold moves.
