Babydoll information.
Please note that information provided on our website can only be reproduced elsewhere with acknowledgement of Babydoll Sheep Breeders Australia as the source.
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How can sheep be registered as BSBA Purebred Babydolls?
A sheep breed is not created instantly. It needs a vision for what the breed will be (the breed standard), choice of the genetics to be used as a base and then careful, selective breeding to produce sheep that fulfill the vision. Babydoll Sheep Breeders Australia (BSBA) records this process in our registry. You can be sure that sheep registered as BSBA Purebred Babydolls have been through a rigorous process to achieve that status. Babydoll Sheep Breeders Australia has a two tier registration system: EM Babydolls (EM is for Emerging) and Purebred Babydolls. Sheep can only move from EM Babydoll to Purebred Babydoll registration after a rigorous inspection process. Ovine Brucellosis is a sexually transmitted disease of sheep spread quickly between rams. There is no treatment for infected rams. The effects can be devastating for a flock, with sudden loss of fertility and the infected rams needing to be culled.
Best practice when buying any breed of ram is to only buy rams from Brucellosis Accredited flocks. An accredited breeder is able to provided a copy of their Brucellosis Accreditation certificate. Alternatively, new rams can be tested (twice) by a vet for Brucellosis before they are allowed into your flock. Our breeders put their heads together to make a list of questions about Babydoll sheep that are often asked...
What are your goals?
You might choose to keep Babydoll Sheep for all sorts of reasons. For example, you might decide that you want them for meat or fibre, to breed and sell, to keep as pets or as lawn mowers in the orchard or vineyard. Tony and Belinda Somers from Somersrust Babydoll Sheep Stud have shared their experience of keeping Babydoll sheep in their organic pear and apple cider orchard in Elands NSW.
Emerging Babydoll (or EM Babydoll) is a term used by Babydoll Sheep Breeders Australia (BSBA) to describe sheep that are not registered as BSBA Purebred Babydoll.  Roogulli Toffee (left) and Osborne Ridge Fleetwood (right) The photos in this post show BSBA Purebred Babydolls that have been recognised for their quality at various sheep shows. They are the result of our Emerging Babydoll system. Many of them have undergone inspection to upgrade their registration from EM Babydoll to BSBA Purebred Babydoll.
There are as many ways to train sheep as there are trainers. We asked some of our breeders for their tips for getting Babydolls to be super friendly.
All Babydoll sheep have Southdown genetics and any one of them could be carrying the fatal gene for Gaucher Disease. Life for a lamb born with two copies of the Gaucher gene is pretty grim and short since they are unable to stand and feed and die in a few days. Anecdotally, it also seems that ewes carrying Gaucher are less fertile, more likely to have stillborn lambs and more likely to die unexpectedly (especially soon after lambing). None of us need this in our Babydoll flocks.
Fortunately there is a simple, inexpensive DNA test that can be done to find out whether a sheep is carrying Gaucher. Gaucher carrier sheep have been found in many Babydoll flocks in Australia. If the breeder has not tested their flock they are unlikely to know the Gaucher status of sheep that they are breeding and could be selling you Gaucher carrier sheep. Please ask about the Gaucher status of any Babydoll rams and ewes you are considering before buying. A reputable Babydoll breeder will show you test results as evidence that the sheep you are buying are Gaucher free. It is much easier to check before buying and avoid introducing Gaucher into your flock than to try to fix the problem later. Why register sheep?
Breeders register sheep as a way of tracking pedigrees, genetics and purity of sheep type. Over time these registrations create flock histories that become a useful resource for all breeders. By registering and tracking our Babydolls we can gradually build our new Australian Babydoll breed. It is a form of quality control that reduces the chance of valuable genetics being wasted by not being tracked and consequently becoming unavailable to registered flocks in the future. Babydoll Sheep Breeders Australia makes the registration process easy for our breeders by providing training in how to use our online registry and keeping registrations simple and inexpensive. |
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