“We put the wool in from 10,000-12,000 lambs and most of it gets accepted,” farm manager John Chittock said.
The wool has to have 0% vegetable matter (VM) and be pesticide-free to meet Camira’s exacting standards under the Wools of New Zealand (WNZ) contract.
“At this time of year we don’t have any problem with the VM. The country here is pretty clean and we don’t have to do anything special with them,” Chittock said.
“We feed them well and it seems to suit our system here. We build them up for the wool and that gets the lambs up and going forward.”
Chittock has managed the 1932ha sheep, beef, and deer farm for the Salvation Army Trust Board for the past 14 years.
Lambing of the Romney ewe flock starts towards the end of September and shearing is in the second week of January.
Jeff Farm is on undulating hill country mid-way between Mataura and Clinton.
The mothers and lambs did well on the sunny slopes, Chittock said. The lambs were about 30-32kg liveweight at shearing and they averaged about 1kg of fleece wool each to go into the Camira contract.
“Once you get over $5/kg greasy for wool then in my opinion it takes a lot of pressure off the (lambs’) meat.’’
John Chittock
Jeff Farm
This season should be good, he said. After drought in February and March the winter and spring had been as good as any time in his time on the farm. Spring storms were common in Southland but they had been spared this year.
The Camira lambs’ wool contract is worth $6.10 a kilogram this season, up from $5.35/kg last year.
“It’s a good starting point and better than what it has been,” Chittock said. “Once you get over $5/kg greasy for wool then in my opinion it takes a lot of pressure off the (lambs’) meat.”
Most lambs were sent for processing about three weeks after shearing.
While the Camira contract is with WNZ, Chittock puts most of his wool through contracts organised by his PGG Wrightson agent Daryl Paskell.
Wrightson also handles the logistics for Jeff Farm’s Camira wool, in line with WNZ’s strategy of working with other companies.
Jeff Farm is 70% sheep, 25% beef, and 5% deer, with 23,500 stock units in total. About 16,000 lambs are produced each year.
Salvation Army Trust Board also operates Jeff Farm as a training farm, with the staff of 10 always including four young trainees.
The trainees come out of Southland schools for a two-year course. Every year two youngsters arrive and two trainees finish and move on to careers elsewhere in the industry.
“Most of them are youngsters who grow out of school or school grows out of them but most go on to have good careers in farming,” Chittock said.
- WNZ hopes to supply 470 tonnes of lambs’ wool to Camira this season, from about 300 suppliers. This is up from last season’s 200t from 140 suppliers.
