Wool's being bred to be a thing of the past

Kakatahi farmer David "Tex" Matthews is fed up with waiting for wool's fortunes to turn around. "If people aren't going to use wool, I can't see any point in growing it," he says. He is building up a flock of woolless sheep on his 1800-hectare farm in the steep hills beside Whanganui's tortuous Parapara highway reports The Dom Post. Strong wool prices have been at historically low levels for most of the past decade, and although the industry is making a concerted effort to improve carpet and textile sales, the returns to farmers show no signs of moving. Mr Matthews is only one of what woolless-sheep breeder Joe Adams suspects is an increasing number of farmers willing to turn their backs on wool. Mr Adams, who has a 220ha stud in the harsh hill country at Hihitahi, south of Waiouru, has bred what he calls a "never-shear" sheep by crossing two breeds that shed their wool - the wiltshire and the dorper. "The years when crossbred wool was a high-value commodity are long gone," he says. "Now, there's little return for a lot of work." Mr Matthews bought 26 rams from Mr Adams to put over his romney-perendale ewes this year. Added to the rams bought in the previous three years, he now has 60. He expects that by the end of the next season, they will have provided him with 1800 ewe lambs that will be the foundation of a woolless flock. He has 7000 ewes and last year had a $27,000 profit from wool after paying the shearing costs. But that fell when the cost of extra shepherding labour and lice and fly dips were taken into account. Up against that he puts the extra meat the wiltshire-dorper crosses are adding to his lambs. The crosses have a meat yield he has measured at 46.9 per cent in a small trial, giving an advantage over his regular lambs of an estimated $5 a lamb. "If you put that across the 5000 lambs I've got to sell, there is an extra $25,000. That's good enough for me." The only flaw he can see is whether the store market will recognise this extra value and pay him a premium, but that is a minor worry.