ROBERT Gardyne has been entering lamb competitions for the last 40 years.
“You’re always testing yourself against the best in the country and you’re always learning,” he says.
“There’s no use resting back on what you used to do 10 or 20 years ago.”
His ability to learn and the ensuing success have resulted in him being crowned New Zealand Lamb Producer of the Decade.
He’s been a finalist in nearly all the 10 years of the Beef +Lamb NZ Golden Lamb awards, the famous Glammies, and was Grand Champion in 2016.
When all the results for the last 10 years were collated – based on scientific analysis and taste – he was number one.
With his son Grant, Gardyne operates a Perendale stud and has had a Texel stud but is downsizing that to simplify the operation. He also sells Perendale-Texel and Suffolk-Texel rams. Then they have a commercial farming business, sending lambs to Alliance for processing.
As well as Producer of the Decade, he was this year’s winner of the silver medal in the Best of Breed: Traditional with a Perendale lamb processed at the Alliance Lorneville plant and also highly commended in the Best of Breed: Open for a Perendale-Suffolk-Texel lamb also processed at Lorneville.
It was all about experience and practice and all those years in the lamb competitions before the Glammies started. He’s always been an early adopter of technology advances.
Gardyne is proud of the many features of his time in the awards.
For the first five years he was farming on flat and fertile but often difficult spring conditions in central Southland and for the last five years in often very dry and summer-difficult tussock hill country in the Ida Valley in Central Otago.
“You couldn’t find more diverse country between those two areas if you tried,” he said.
“It shows that it all comes down to diet.”
The stud business sells only rams.
Though he’s moved from Southland, Gardyne still heads to the Gore Showgrounds to sell rams, not wanting to compete against existing ram breeders in his adopted home area.
This year there were 16 finalists in the Glammies and four of them were lambs bred from Gardyne rams.
“Every year of the competition we’ve had clients as finalists. When you’re in ram breeding the most important thing is how your clients are getting on.”
A lot of Alliance lamb suppliers, mostly from Southland but as far north as Murchison, also buy Gardyne rams to cover their breeding ewes.
The final Glammies judging looks for qualities such as taste, flavour and aroma and he says the competition has been improved in the last couple of years by expert chefs coming aboard as judges.
Before that, though, science is a major part of the competition because that is how the yield from the lambs and just the hind leg of the lambs are measured.
Farmers select a group of lambs to go in for testing but their one lamb going into the finals is chosen by the competition organisers so they need quality across the flock.
Quantifying marbling levels is part of the testing process, back in favour because that is where Omega 3 protein is found, allowing lamb to be sold as a health food.
“You might wonder why yield is in there but it is so important because the difference between the amount of meat on a good lamb can be as much as 50% more than on a poor lamb but the cost of processing them is the same,” Gardyne said.
“For the good of the NZ meat industry we need to be promoting yield to keep it economic.”
The yield is also important because it allows small and attractive cuts – French rack is a high-value example – that appeal to supermarket shoppers and other consumers.
He’s quite clear about the need for excellent diet.
“The key to sheep farming is clover and the key to clover is ph level, boron, molybdenum, potash and sulphur.”
The family heavily limed the hill property after they moved in five years ago and have continued the fertiliser programme conscientiously since then.
The clover volumes are markedly higher than they were, to the extent that even at the highest level “you can’t put your foot down anywhere without touching some clover”.
He also grows plantain and chicory and is a fan of high-sugar grasses, which, he says, have improved yield significantly.
On the high ground of the Ida Valley tussock is very important.
“It gathers in moisture every night when everything else dries out in summer and it provides the other plants with shade and shelter so we’ve got good green colour around every tussock plant.”
In central Southland the Gardyne farming operation had reasonable lambing percentages but high lamb losses because of cold, severe spring conditions.
At Ida Valley ewes are left to fend for themselves on the hills. Without human assistance, in the Perendale twin-carrying blocks lambing rates over 190% are quite common. The Perendale-Texel stud lambs have a 96% survival rate and the Suffolk-Texels stud have 94% survival, both very high rates for terminal sire breeds.
“We tag the Suffolk-Texels at tailing and that’s the first time we’ve seen them.”
The ewes are all pre-lamb shorn and go up to the hills in a very fit condition and are very good at finding shelter, he said.
Asked if farmers like him are well enough rewarded for supplying top quality and high-yielding lambs to their processor, Gardyne says he gets an excellent return for his stock on what is really uneconomic terrain.
However, the sheep industry is in crisis and more should be done “to pull together for the NZ brand” and not make the mistake of being so dependent on one market.
“And, as farmers, we need to concentrate on what we do inside the farmgate, things we can control, because we can’t control what happens outside the gate.”
There’s another highlight to the Glammies and that’s meeting the Iron Maidens, the sports stars B+LNZ engages to promote the meat sector.
“That’s one of the joys of the competition,” Gardyne says, speaking very highly of Sarah Walker’s role in the International Olympic Committee and Sophie Pascoe’s work inspiring school leavers.
“They are doing a lot more than people realise.”
