SELECTING FOR RESILIENCE

It has been well documented that the only way to beat drench resistance is to select for both resistance and resilience in your breeding programme. We are the only stud (of any breed) in the South Island to be doing this.

At weaning all are ram lambs are drenched to remove any pre-weaning paddock effect and then grazed as one mob (nearly 600 this year). Included in this mob is a number of randomly selected ram lambs (a control mob) that are drenched every 21 days, the rest of the mob are undrenched and monitored for egg counts and growth rates.

 When a tail end starts developing that obviously need drenching and FEC are high enough all the lambs are individually FEC and weighed. Their daily weight gains since weaning are compared to those of the control mob, those lambs that have daily gains of 80% or less of the control mob are drenched and recorded, those that are still growing at 80% or faster are left undrenched. From then on every two weeks we repeat this process (apart from FEC) with the slower growing rams drenched and recorded.

100 days after their weaning drench 30% of the ram lambs born were still undrenched and growing faster than the control (drenched) mob. Of those that needed drenching at the first date some had high egg counts, they were neither resistant or resilient to worms and some had low egg counts, they were resistant to worms but were putting so much energy into fighting the worms that they had nothing left for growth.

ROMNEY TEXEL CROSS RAMS FOR SALE

As well as our Orari Gorge Romneys we also have first cross Romney/Texel rams for sale. We carefully selected some stud Texel rams from breeders that have been breeding Texels for over 20 years and caring for their feet and wool as well as the growth and the meat. We mated these to our most fertile Romney stud ewes and the progeny go through the same rigorous selection as our pure Romney rams do.

Rather than stabilising at half Romney half Texel we will only offer the first cross (F1) rams for sale each year. This means that as well as a reliable ram with good breeding values they will also have hybrid vigour to pass on to your flock each year, not just the first year.

We believe these rams are a good way of injecting some meat and growth into any maternal breed without reducing fertility and with less risk of introducing any undesirable traits into a ewe flock.

EWE EFFICIENCY STUDY

As we run our ewes on steep tussock country up to 3,500 feet but also expect high levels of performance from them efficiency is vital. There is no point selecting for high growth rates if you end up with a lot of big ewes that need extra feeding to see them through tough winters on the hill or droughts in the Summer or Autumn.

Because of this we are more than happy to be part of Agresearch’s ewe efficiency study. This involves individually weighing and condition scoring all our stud ewes at mating, scanning and weaning and relating this data to their performance (number of lambs weaned and weight of lambs).

Progeny testing for meat yield

Although we have been eye muscle scanning for over ten years now we have decided to take this to the next level by doing some progeny trials. This will involve each of the stud rams used also mating some commercial ewes with the progeny followed through to slaughter with data such as growth rates, kill dates and most importantly meat yield and distribution being measured.

This will involve a lot of extra work but we feel it is necessary to ensure we are producing the correct product for the market.

Back to main Romney page