July 2023 Newsletter
WHATS HAPPENING WITHIN THE STUD IN 2023
After a terrific 2022 Ram selling season in all 3 facets of ram sales, auction rams, private selection rams and of course Classing Classic/ Stud rams we are confident that the rams we are producing are ticking the boxes for you the clients and for us within our commercial flocks. This year’s sale rams display all the characteristics we pride ourselves on but with more consistency, stronger pedigree, and higher-ranking data. We internally have great confidence in the direction of our breeding, and we see it flow through our entire merino flock. With confidence in our breeding direction and consistency in our rams we have again increased our auction number to 183.
Most of you may know that we have been increasing early growth but setting a cap on adult weight, this years catalogue has seen a jump in weaning weight and post weaning weight whilst yearling and adult increments have not moved, the exact growth curve we are aiming for.
The challenge when increasing growth is to maintain our wool traits, which we have also achieved, wool cut, length and micron have not been affected by the lift in growth, often heavy carcass, fast growing animals can increase micron and decrease wool cut but its something we are very conscious of.
After a record wet year across the eastern seaboard last year, people would be lying if they didn’t see added pressure on feet,structure ,wool colour, so post flood we decided to be really critical on the fundamentals of sheep breeding and fine tune and identify areas where we can improve, all in all our stock came through with flying colours, toenail structure, pasterns, shoulders and wool colour were all very good, in saying that though we have made a conscious decision to adopt and use some of the new breeding values such as Footrot resistance, Fleece rot and wool colour which you will see pop up in the 2023 drop.
Plenty of research is being carried out into the foot structure of merinos and therefore resistance to Footrot, unfortunately we were unable to participate last year but hope to this year, but you will see those numbers start to come through our system through linkage with outside rams we purchased last year.
2023 Drop Studs
Lamb marking has recently finished with a pleasing 128% in the adult stud ewes, and as of mid July our stud ewe lambs will be in full swing lambing.
In the spring ram selling season we purchased 3 stud sires, 2 from Mumblebone and 1 from Wallaloo Park, all 3 rams from the same sire, Anderson 160729, who is renowned for his early growth, white well marked wools and nicknamed “the structure king”.
These 3 rams along with our own stud sires were all mated to ewes with specific traits, 95% of our match making this year was to breed consistency and of course always have 5% there to try and breed some “bar raising” animals within industry.
Key breeding traits for our 2023 drop lambs
Lower Micron (FD)
Higher Weaning and Post Weaning Weights
Capping Adult Weight
Balancing Wool Cut with growth, culling or correcting very high growth animals who produce below average Wool cut
Lifting Wool Cut and balancing breech traits and staple length
Maintaining our carcass traits whilst lowering FD
Selecting for WEC through linkage
Using pedigree to fully eliminate scur and horns (wastage)
Using Reproduction ASBV’s such as conception and ewe rearability
Fine tuning the fundamentals, feet, shoulders, hocks, wool colour, lock structure
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