Only the tough survive the Wairere hills

A well known Southland  ram breeder once said to me and a group of Lincoln students, sheep breeding today is not about the breed but about the genes.

As the biggest ram seller in the country, Derek Daniell, has set some tough standards for his sheep to perform, and with heavy culling, to express the genes that make sheep farming more profitable.

It has been the continual increasing costs that have sucked profits out of the sheep sector, and this breeders goals of producing a tough easy care sheep that produces quality progeny should be applauded.

Sheep bred under enviromental pressure, at high stocking rates, that have produced a lamb as a hogget, selected for twins not triplets, producing good eye muscle, and resistant to facial eczema, and worms, plus all the other traditional culling procedures, should provide farmers with an animal for the future.

Asked to explain the key to being a successful sheep breeder, Derek Daniell thinks for a second or two, then smiles and says, "Well, to put it simply, it's about tits and bums." He looks down the hill to a small group of two-tooth ewes hugging the shade of an overhanging bank and explains. "It's tits because the ewes need to be good milkers and rear big lambs." He points to the two-tooth rams on the hillside above him and adds, "And it's bums because that's where most of the meat is."

The sheep are romneys, the breed that is the mainstay of his Wairere stud in the inhospitable hills of northern Wairarapa reports Stuff.  The stud can fairly claim to be the nation's biggest ram seller, with sales topping 3500 a year from the Wairarapa home base and from joint venture farms in Otago and King Country. Satellite flocks have been established on other farms in the North and South Islands, giving Wairere a 20,000-ewe romney base. A joint venture with a South Downs, Sussex, farmer is in its early stages, selling more than 100 rams last year, and 300 rams have been flown to Melbourne in the past five years. Mr Daniell also has hopes of a joint venture in Chile.

The Wairere maxim is to test the romneys with a harsh regime so that only the strongest survive. The farm is a tough testing ground. Wet, cold and windy in winter, it can bake dry in the summer sun. Of the 1070 hectares in pasture, just 20ha is flat. The hills rise to 532 metres and the tops have a year-round average wind run of 35kmh - plans to build a wind farm are under way. More pressure is piled on the sheep by a stocking rate of 11.2 to 12.3 stock units a hectare, depending on the season. The normal stocking rate on such hills is 9 to 10 stock units. "We don't feed them up to produce big two-tooth rams, we feed them down to push the non-doers out the bottom," he says.

Wairere has been mating all ewe hoggets since 1966, leaving them alone to have their lambs. Since 2003 the pressure has been further tightened, with only those hoggets getting in lamb being kept.  Having big numbers allows for heavy culling. Wairere has 8000 Sheep Improvement-recorded romney ewes and 3250 recorded composites. In multiplier flocks on other farms are another 12,000 romneys and 800 record terminals.

Culling is on sound structure, including the udders, good muscling, minimal dags, good feet and consistency in these traits. Added to that are the results from recording of fertility, growth rates, eye muscle and wool.The ability to produce twins rather than triplets with their slower growth and need for closer management is highly sought after.  In a recent analysis by Abacus Biotech of 15 flocks, the Wairere flock of recorded ewes was shown to have the best ratio of more twins to fewer triplets.

The ribeye muscle of up to 5000 ram lambs is scanned each year. "Over 15 years this has led to a type in strong demand from processors and we have testimonials from specialist finishers to say our lambs are superior." Part of the story is also the Wairere romney's resilience to internal parasites. This has been built up through reducing drenching. Ewe hoggets are drenched pre-lamb but adult ewes are not dosed. The other serious animal health problem, facial eczema, is also being tackled with the introduction of rams from resistant flocks run by Edward Dinger and John Marchant in Waikato.