Baderloo Poll Merinos keep up with the times
A MODERN Merino flock with figures to back its performance is no newcomer to the industry.
A MODERN Merino flock with figures to back its performance is no newcomer to the industry.
That enterprise is Baderloo Poll Merinos, run by the Hammat family at Spalding in South Australia.
And as you would expect with a modern Merino flock, the Hammats also don’t mules.
What makes this stud Poll Merino flock stand out is that none of this is new. The sheep have not been mulesed for 14 years and the principals have been using Australian Sheep Breeding Values to assist selection decisions for 18 years.
The flock is now run by Daniel and Demelza Hammat, who have taken over the reins from Dan’s father and mother, the late Phil Hammat and Ann Hammat.
“Dad was really progressive and ran a ram breeding syndicate for others for 10 years,” Dan said.
“He could see the benefits of using Soft Rolling Skins breeding strategies and Australian Sheep Breeding Values.
“When he decided to establish his own flock in 2000, he wanted to push things along and he saw the huge benefits of the objective measurement and recording of animals.”
The legacy that Phil left included full pedigrees of every sheep within the stud and the ability to clearly track the performance of the Poll Merino flock, which is run in 450mm rainfall country.
The sheep breeding enterprise is run on four blocks totalling about 820ha, with an extra 1400ha lease of cropping country available each summer.
ON A ROLL
WHEN Dan returned to the property about five years ago, he quickly embraced the breeding aims and goals for the stud.
With the late Dr Jim Watts as classer, Dan saw the benefits of working with a mix of Soft Rolling Skins philosophies. with the approach of zero tolerance to skin wrinkles and the capacity to produce large volumes of wool, and then the use of ASBVs.
“With SRS, we were selecting sheep that had thinner, lighter, plainer skins anyway, and then these sheep are able to put more energy into growth and performance,” Dan said.
“It means we have some pretty impressive ASBVS on the sheep in our flock.”
The kind of sheep Dan wants to breed is complex. It has to be able to suit a meat and wool market, must have high fertility and plain skin. But above all, it must be practical.
“When we see a sheep walk down the race, it has to have four sound feet, two testicles, no black spots, can’t be hocky and have sound shoulders — these are key checks before we do anything with skins or figures,” Dan said. “There is no point having a fantastic ram that can’t walk around.”
Dedication to accuracy in recording information about the sheep is integral to the integrity of the Baderloo flock’s figures. Scanning figures were matched with lambs weaned to determine the ASBV for NLW (the number of lambs weaned of each ewe to determine the ASBV for NLW ewe).
Good, old observation was used to work out pedigree of the progeny and it then enabled them to provide data to sheep genetics to produce NLW.
It was time-consuming work watching ewes and lambs, but vital to ascertaining which were the best performers.
Last year, the Baderloo flock was involved in an Australian Wool Innovation trial using proximity sensing collars and electronic tags to make this task a little easier.
It’s this determination to provide accurate figures, and then select accordingly, that is seeing this stud emerge as an industry leader.
The flock has an impressive lambing percentage of at least 130 per cent, but has some mobs that do much more than this. Two mobs of maidens have scanned 162 per cent in lamb, with conception rates up to 174 per cent.
Dan said one group of ewes scanned 133 foetuses from 88 ewes with three dry ewes, and lost just four lambs between scanning and weaning, to achieve a percentage of 147 per cent. He said it showed the value of selecting ewes that were not only fertile, but able to successfully rear lambs.
Fat and muscle come into this, but Dan does not lose sight of the fact that the stud and its clients want to have good wool on their sheep too.
“A word I like to use a lot is balanced, and that is what we are trying to do with our sheep,” Dan said.
“We do have a big focus on growth and our ASBV for the flock for yearling weight is 6.83 when the industry average is 4.09, so the Baderloo sheep are on average 3kg heavier as a yearling than the average.”
The high growth rates were tested when the Baderloo sheep were entered in a feedlot trial that included all breeds, along with specific terminals. The Hammats’ sheep placed second to a terminal by just 0.4 per cent.
“Fat and muscle and fertility go hand-in-hand and complement each other,” Dan said.
Throw wool into the mix and there is a whole new definition of balancing that needs to be achieved.
“We all know there are negative correlations between high fleece weight and growth,” he said. “We have a ram that is in the top 1 per cent in Australia for yearling weight, but we don’t want all of them to be like that.”
LEADER OF THE PACK
THE ASBV statistics for the Baderloo flock are impressive. They are trait leaders in yearling weight, yearling clean fleece weight, yearling eye muscle depth, yearling fat and yearling staple length.
The wool always has to be considered, and a focus is put on density and length with the goal of producing “bold, crimpy wool”.
Baderloo’s top-performing ewes cut up to 4kg-plus of wool every six months, measuring up to 90mm. Rams are also shorn twice a year, but can produce staple lengths above 110mm, showing the full potential as density and length are increased.
“If we can get our ewes and our clients ewes cutting that 4kg of wool and producing 140 per cent of lambs, then that is a balance that can produce profit,” Dan said.
The twice-yearly shearing allows a greater wool cut and also avoids any potential problems with flystrike.
Not that the Baderloo flock suffers from their lack of mulesing. Even in 2016, when 12 months rainfall fell in six months, there was just one stud ewe that had body strike and breech strike was avoided with a small crutch in September before shearing.
Dan puts the lack of flystrike down to the SRS skins in the sheep, which are thinner and plainer and don’t hold moisture, and dry faster.
The wool is sold as non-mulesed and while Dan said it was hard to detect if there was a “premium”, there were no regrets for switching away from it.
“The market is clearly showing an increasing trend for higher values for non- mulesed wool,” he said.
“The industry said it was going to ban mulesing by 2010 and in 2004, we just pinned our ears back and accepted it and moved forward.
“I don’t necessarily know that we do always get a premium for the wool, but we are certainly not excluding any competition on our wool from buyers who may not want to use wool from sheep that have been mulesed.
“This puts us at a big advantage, seeing our hogget’s wool sell for 180 cents a kilogram over valuation when it was sold before Christmas”.
The Hammats have traditionally sold their rams through private selection, mainly to clients within 100km of their base.
But the impressive ASBV and performance of the Baderloo sheep means their reach is expanding. Semen has been sold to breeders in Western Australia, South Australia and NSW, and this year, Dan said they were having their first on-property sale, in August.
“It’s slightly nerve-racking, but it is also very exciting,” he said.
“This is a great time to be in the sheep industry and I’m excited to be able to use technology and science to breed the best possible sheep that I can.”
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