Careful consideration should be given to whether to go ahead with mating all, or part of, your hogget flock each year. It should be seen as a flexible tool to achieve higher production in good years, but keeping in mind that long term detrimental effects can occur if hoggets are not up to weight or not fed adequately.

While there can be some big advantages:

Production of a ‘bonus’ lamb in their first year of life
Provides an early screening tool of potentially more fertile animals
A higher lifetime performance if fed correctly
Reduced generation interval if selecting hogget lambs as replacements
Higher profits

There can also be some major disadvantages:

In particular relating to if hoggets are underweight at breeding or if they are not fed appropriately after mating

- Increased feed requirements

Potential for reduced 2th liveweight and reduced longevity in the herd if hard done by
Increased number of rams/teasers
Increased workload

Currently in NZ about 30-35% of hoggets are mated each year achieving an average lambing percentage of 60%. This is with a huge range from 20-140%+.

Some key things to consider are:

-MINIMUM live weights of 40Kg and BCS of 2.5 should be the target at ram in date.

-Additional feed requirements will need to be accounted for, both for the growing hoggets and additional lambs.

-Monitoring of live weights should be done throughout pregnancy period. Total live weight gains of 130-150g/day throughout pregnancy are required to ensure performance of the dam and their lambs are not affected.

Stock numbers should be adjusted accordingly. The extra feed required by 4 mated hoggets is equivalent to the feed eaten by 1 ewe in a year.
Teaser rams are a great tool to increase hoggets mated and condense the lambing spread.
Ram ratios of 1:75-100 or lower should be used, particularly if teaser rams are used.

If things are looking tight this year on your farm or hoggets are not up to weights, consider either not mating, or only mating a portion of them.