Thursday, March 28, 2024

Breeding the perfect sheep

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Breeding Merinos for a perfect balance between wool and meat is no easy task but not one that daunts Jayne Rive. She views it as a journey of continual improvement and is now seeing success in the sheep on the ground. She told Alan Williams about her work.
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Helping farmers breed more Merino lambs able to be moved off their high-country farms for processing before winter is the goal of Central Otago stud sheep-classer Jayne Rive.

She’s achieving that with half the wether lambs on Cloudy Peak Station near Tarras she and partner George manage for her parents and will increase the ratio as time goes on. 

They buy rams from the Nine Mile Stud where she manages the breeding programme.

One of Nine Mile’s best clients, the Bog Roy Station at Omarama, is ahead of the pack, getting most of its lambs away before winter.

That is the key to successful Merino-raising for those commercial farmers not farming specifically for wool. 

“It means they can focus on the lambing ewes and the ewe lambs over winter, without worrying about the wethers taking up the feed,” Rive said.

“It’s a major change and one the industry needed, especially those people needing options other than just fine wool.”

That provides the glamour for Merinos and traditionally makes up about two-thirds of farm income but with high meat prices and more surplus sheep sales that is now changing.

Nine Mile Stud has bred the wrinkly skin out of the sheep as part of the move from the absolute focus on wool to a dual-purpose animal with the goal of a perfect balance of meat and wool. 

“I think we’re on the right track. The ewes have more muscle and fat and are more resilient on the hills and in drought conditions,” she says.

A lot of the young rams are sold to the high-country stations around Wakatipu.

The high meat and wool prices meant this year’s Nine Mile Stud 18-month-old rams achieved record bids at the annual auction in mid-February.

The stud was set up by owner Gordon Lucas in 1998, initially to provide rams for his large commercial Merino farming operations.

He was an ultra-fine Merino wool enthusiast but also interested in an animal easier to farm and more productive. 

“We’ve completely changed the sheep over the last 20 years,’’ he says.

Rive had just returned from 10 years in Australia where she went crutching then worked with and studied Merino flocks. 

Lucas and her father Graeme were friends and her role at the stud began from a conversation alongside a race full of sheep.

“He asked me what I thought. I said this is what I would select and that was the start.”

She eventually selected 200 ewes from about 5000 as the basis of the stud flock. Four or five generations down the track the flock remains the progeny of those ewes. Ram semen is brought in from Merino studs throughout Australia.

Like Lucas, Rive is proud of the animals being bred by the stud.

However, despite the major changes and advances in the animal, they haven’t yet cracked the perfect balance.

“I don’t think you do. Improvement is just ongoing,” Rive said.

“The work becomes more exciting and interesting and the goal posts keep moving. You try and see the future and breed to it.”

What she sees is more interesting, less predictable weather patterns ahead that the industry will need to respond to. 

When Nine Mile Stud was started in 1998, the traditional Merino was pre-dominantly a wool producing animal with beautiful fine white wool ideal for Italian suits.

Lambing rates were about 90% and the wether lambs, born in spring, were about a year-old when they went to the works.

“There was always good meat but it was slower growing. It took longer to get there,” Rive said.

The sheep had more skin and it was wrinkly, helping to grow the wool. The body shape was narrow, the sheep had a good, strong constitution and that plus waterproof wool allowed it to survive on hill country.

“When we started we really wanted to change the shape, to take the skin off and free it up. There was a lot of energy tied up in the skin and growing wool.”

A crucial time for Nine Mile came in 2004 with two major advances.

The team started eye-muscle scanning. It was a feature Merino were light in and scanning led to breeding improvement in meat and fat content in the animal and got the shape right.

In the same year the Australian Estimated Breeding Value (AEBV) was adopted. 

“This was the start of our big focus on the values we could not properly measure before, such as carcase and growth patterns, so we could bring the growth patterns forward. We could compare an early-born single with a late-born twin and analyse everything and get everything on the same page.”

At that time Rive was also realising farmers needed more options for their Merino flocks like the ability to get lambs away earlier, in the autumn, and having ewes going to the ram without having to be flushed.

She’s very satisfied with in the gains in pre-winter processing. Reducing the skin area had been a major part of that gain.

Breeding a more efficient ewe was important. 

“We had to watch how much feed we were pushing into the ewes and pushing their growth. We still need to be careful they’re not getting too big so that a ewe is not spending the whole time eating for herself.”

As part of this work Rive watches the crossbred sheep sector closely. 

“They are way in front of us in getting really efficient ewes.”

Lambing rates have increased significantly, including the two-tooth performance, and gains will continue. 

Bog Roy Station owner Gundy Anderson is one of the major buyers of Nine Mile rams. His perfect ram has a “long staple, great depth of twist through the hind-quarter and is clean through the points”.

It sounds very technical but mainly means strong wool growth, for twice-a-year shearing, but no wool close to the ground, such as on the leg, which is helpful for efficiency. The depth of twist is harder to explain but effectively means a full rear-end rather than a long, narrow shape.

Autumn is a busy time onfarm, checking the ewes, their progeny, stud records and breeding values as part of the selection programme matching ewes and rams in the start-of-May mating season. Rive is excited about the qualities of the latest semen import from Australia. 

 “Sheep breeding is all about the journey,” she says.  

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