The 60 Romdale ewes on his Bay of Islands farm have so far produced 95 surviving lambs. One late-term ewe is yet to give birth to at least one lamb.
Cook said the record survival from scanning to lambing was set by the ewes themselves, unassisted on hill country except for one that was in trouble with a single plus co-joined, unviable twins.
Cook acknowledged the smallness of his flock but said the lambing performance was nonetheless meritorious and founded on the work done over 30 years with up to four different breeds and tagging 900 lambs or more a year.
“In 1996 we started the Romdales and the focus has always been easy care, no shepherding.
“We had only one set of triplets and that ewe is rearing them all so I am very happy with the numbers of twins.”
Sheep farmers traditionally expected a loss rate of 20% from scanning to lamb survival and to have a year with less than half of that was very gratifying, Cook said.
He had the River Run Romney stud for 25 years until downsizing the property and dispersing the stock five years ago and the Romdales are a result of Perendale rams over Romney hoggets, subsequently stabilised with Romdale rams.
The Romdale ewes, therefore, had the benefit of the fertility improvement of the Romneys since 1987 when the stud was founded when Cook was still a teenager.
One 2012-born ewe had twins as a hogget and then twins every year bar one, when she had triplets.
The oldest of the ewes are eight-year-olds, he said.
Registered Suffolk and Suftex sheep were dispersed last year and Peter and Shona Cook have the remaining 8.8ha on the market after selling 116ha in 2014 and 67ha since.
Peter’s family roots in the district go back to the Church Missionary Society pioneers who settled in Waimate North before the Treaty of Waitangi.
