Careful selection is helping Bacchus Marsh farmer finetune his wool
Bacchus Marsh farm manager Leigh Harrison is an ardent Merino supporter, concentrating on improved genetics to lift wool production.
FINDING the right kind of Merino is a balancing act for one central Victorian livestock enterprise.
Leigh Harrison manages the 4500ha Greystones near Bacchus Marsh, a large expanse of native pasture and cropping country.
While almost a third of this is leased out for cropping, sheep remain the major enterprise on the property and Merinos are the breed of choice. They will join 1700 ewes this year. Normally the flock is 6000, but numbers have been curbed by the season.
The country is considered ideal for growing wool, but Leigh has spent the past 15 years fine-tuning the fibre operation.
And he credits an increase in wool cut by at least 25 per cent to a switch to higher quality genetics.
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It was a step-up in commitment to buying higher priced rams to put into the commercial operation that he attributes the lift in wool cut.
“We were buying a range of rams from different breeders, and probably only paying $400-$500 for a flock ram,” Leigh said.
“We realised that if we wanted to improve the quality of the wool and our sheep, we needed to spend more to get the right kind of rams and we’ve paid up to $5000.”
Leigh buys rams from the Hazeldean stud at Cooma in NSW, and uses a mix of Australian Sheep Breeding Values and physical assessment to make his selections.
He looks at figures for fleece weight to try to continue to boost the amount of wool the sheep are growing, but herein lies the balancing act.
“We don’t want to grow so much wool that it affects the fertility of the flock,” Leigh said.
“We have a flock that in most seasons is able to mark 100 per cent of lambs to ewes joined and that is important for us.
“Having a high wool cut can influence fertility, so it’s about trying to lift that wool without affecting the number of lambs we get.”
But with careful selection has come the lift in wool cuts. Before the infusion of the rams with higher ASBVs for fleece weight, the adult sheep were cutting 4-5kg of wool. This has now risen to 6kg, and even more in good years.
Leigh classes the flock himself, but takes his wool classer Terry Johnson to the ram sales as an extra set of eyes to pick any faults or to spot a ram that Leigh might have missed.
“I do like to look at figures, but if I get to the sale and the ram does not look right, we won’t buy him,” Leigh said.
RAM RAID
RAMS are joined at a slightly higher joining rate than the industry standard, with three to four rams to every mob of about 200 ewes.
“We want to make sure the ewes are well covered (by rams),” he said.
Ewes lamb in August/September, to try to take advantage of a surge in spring growth, but that doesn’t always happen.
Last year was particularly tight, and so while the ewes were not fed while they were lambing, feeding resumed after the ewes and lambs had mothered up after lamb marking.
“You never want to feed during lambing. There is just too much mismothering,” Leigh said.
“But we had to feed them to keep the condition in the ewes, so delayed it for six weeks and then had to feed the ewes and lambs together.”
While it was not ideal, Leigh said there were some advantages to feeding the ewe and lamb unit.
“Those lambs learn how to come to feed while they are still on their mothers, so you can then drive into a paddock and virtually call the weaners up as they have seen their mothers feeding and know what it is all about,” Leigh said.
The lambs are weaned in mid-December and shorn, with the wether portion kept until they are two and have been shorn with a full 12 months wool, then sold.
The ewe portion is run though, with a class-out rate of nearly 40 per cent.
“We are pretty tough on them, and I think that is why we have such a high-quality flock,” Leigh said.
“There is often nothing very wrong with those we class out and we tend to nit-pick to make sure we are keeping the very best to include in the flock.
“They may have a bit of colour in the wool or not enough style, or maybe a bit too much neck, and there is a ready market anyway for the ewes we class out, so it works for our system.”
SHEAR BEAUTY
WHILE the wethers are shorn in February, the main shearing takes place in May. This allows the ewes to have a shorter wool length when they are lambing in late winter and early spring, lessening the chances of them becoming cast.
The most recent clip sold this month, and despite the correction in wool prices, still made more than 1400c/kg greasy price, returning $2400-$2500 a bale.
Leigh is determined to keep breeding fine-wool Merino sheep. Some lines of weaner wool this year were as fine as 14.8 micron, but the flock average is usually about 18 micron.
He is frustrated that the gap between superfine and fine wool has narrowed, but believes the time will come when long-stapled, superfine wool will be rewarded.
He’s also not tempted to shear his flock twice a year, despite sometimes being penalised for long staple lengths.
“Sometimes we have wool lengths that are up to 130mm and people ask whether we should shear twice a year,” he said.
“There is too much mucking around especially with the breeding flock, and while we might get a slight discount for the over-length, we are still shearing more wool, so that evens that out.
“You also have to factor in the extra costs of shearing again, so we are comfortable with the single shearing each year.”
While many around them have switched to total cropping or gone into prime lambs, Leigh said the self-replacing Merino flock was the best fit for the country he managed.
“We have some really stony country and we have a lot of native pastures,” he said.
“It can be tough, but the sheep seem to thrive here and you might look at a paddock and wonder what they are getting but the Merinos look really good.
“But it is also country that will explode when we get rain, and it is doing that a bit now that we have had some good falls in autumn.”
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