# What is the best type of excercise to build muscle on a show lamb?



## Ryou-Sama2

Everyone that I've asked says that walking them up and down stairs is good but my last market lamb was afraid to walk down the stairs and I ended up having to carry it back down. I figured it just wasn't used to that sort of thing but day to day it remained the same, walk him up, carry him down. In the long run he did turn out pretty nice, but I think I probably gained more muscle than he did carrying him up and down a big staircase a few times a day until he was around 130 lbs. Is there anything else I can do that wouldn't cause this problem? Or was it just my particular lamb that did this?


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## Celtic Herritag

Do you have a lamb chariot or some one who owns one? Use it, if not push your lamb backwards he'll tense up and develop a nice butt. If you have a hill you can use, fence a small run off or you can string a zip line, have one person at the bottom and one at the top, and one if the middle if the hill is really long, run him up and down the hill for a few minutes. The judge is really looking for a good rump. If he won't walk down the stairs back him down them. Be careful not to confuse your backing cues with your bracing cues.


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## Ryou-Sama2

The only place I can keep my lambs is at the stable behind my high school, because my parents won't let me keep it at home. There aren't really any hills and I don't know of anyone with a lamb chariot. I'm going to get my next lamb in January and I'm going to try to get a ewe lamb this time. I'll try pushing her backwards. That should do well because the lambs at our fair are often practically rumpless. Thanks.


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## Celtic Herritag

I'd advise picking her front feet up so that all her weight will be on her hind feet, and she won't get confused when you ask her to brace.


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## Celtic Herritag

We keep our lambs in confinment, (or at least I do) so we have to exercise them or they'll go stir crazy and flabby. Our fair requires us to slick shear our lambs, so tight pretty skin is important. I don't know how you guys do it but the judges will feel the lamb to determine back fat and muscling, so a flabby butt will get you marked down. We don't really get these body builder lambs but you need a lamb with a bit of muscle to put you toward the top. Where do you show?


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## ONThorsegirl

Ok, Thanks for the info. 

Our lambs are kept in Box stalls, and everyother day are let out to roam freely in a small pasture. We have 6 lambs for show and 5 ewes in the barn now. We don't have many purebred to show just crossbreds mainly, but we are showing 2 Registered Oxford lambs. We show in Eastern Ontario, if anyone is familiar with Ontario the largest Fair is The Royal Agriculture Fair in Toronto where several hundred sheep attend. WE show there every other year to pretty much just have fun. We have a fair to go to every second weekend starting in July to the middle of October. Where the Regionals are held. And we have our 4-H acheivement in 2 weeks. The rules aren't as tight here, they don't need to have really short wool but 1/2 and inch is average.

Well I have to go, Melissa


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## Ryou-Sama2

When we show market lambs they have to be slick shorn. We keep all of the market lambs that come from our school in the same pen. We usually have maybe twenty of them in a 20x40 pen. The only exercise that they give themselves is running up the the front of the fence when someone is going to feed them. Most people exercise their lambs every day or at least every week day (Most of the lambs get weekends off; what spoiled lambs) And they walk them up and down the large bleachers at my school and walk/jog them around the track. They're supposed to walk at least a mile every day, because our judges really like stocky legs. They want them to be very lean and muscular with around .05-.1 inches of back fat. We show PB Suffolk and some Suffolk/Hampshire crosses. The lambs usually sell for $2.50-$4/lb but some people sell them for up to $14/lb. The lambs have to be at least 100 lbs to make weight and a lot of people don't make it. The nice lambs are usually over 120. The lambs are usually five or six months old at the time of the fair but sometimes they're born too late so the don't weight enough. Under 100 lbs they don't go through auction and you have to sell out of the barn, which never makes a profit and you often don't sell at all and end up eating the lamb yourself. That pretty much sums up our entire process.


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## ONThorsegirl

Ok, Thanks

From what I can tell things are so different in the US than what they are here. Things are much more particular there than here. This is no part of our school which sounds really neat and I wish people were more into it but there is hardly any interest.

It is neat learning how everything is so different from place to place.
Melissa


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## Laurie J

Hi! My kids just finished spending a week at our county fair. (We are in Southwest Washington state). They took 4 market lambs. Our lambs are Suffolk and are born between mid February and mid March. They weighed between 117 to 138 lbs. Requirements for 4-H here is 100 lb. minimum and 150 lb. maximum with a daily gain of 1/3 lb. from weigh in, which was 68 days prior to the fair, and weigh in at the fair. Ours had a daily gain of around 3/4 lb. Animals are slick shorn here. We shear them 2 days before haul-in. We pen up the market lambs and wean them after the weigh-in in June. They have a lot of room to run around on a hill, and pretty much limit-less grain and hay. Usually we have pretty good judges, but this year we were discouraged, as the judge didn't even feel the leg or the loin. He just looked at them and seemed to favor the fat, flabby lambs. Very annoying, as we had our nicest lambs ever, and they have been bred to have nice big legs. Hopefully he won't be back next year! The kids did well at the sale, and got $3.60 to $4.20/lb. The highest was $5.00/lb., and that was for the grand champion. Maybe we should raise rabbits, though, as the grand champion rabbits sold for $130 each!!!!


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## punksheepshower

first of all. i wouldnt suggest picking the lambs feet up off the ground. some judges will see you do that and put u at the bottom of the class for it. sprints are a good way to build muscle and lose fat. isometrics also works very well. go to www.lambinators.homestead.com and click on articles and then look around for something about excersize or isometrics.


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