Measured approach reaps rewards
Continually improving flock selection is helping to keep these Merino breeders at the top, writes James Wagstaff.
IT was a statement not lost on Chad Taylor.
“I saw a quote somewhere that went along the lines of ‘If you can’t measure it, you’re just another bloke with an opinion’,” the passionate Merino breeder from Wuuluman, near Wellington, in central NSW says.
“It’s a great quote … I want to take the opinion out of breeding and actually replace it with some evidence.”
It’s with this quote in mind that Chad and wife Louise have taken one of Australia’s oldest and most traditional Merino studs, founded almost a century and a half ago, and positioned it squarely for the future.
A future, they say, that is geared around reproduction and fleece value, and a conscious effort to evolve with consumer preferences.
The Taylor name has been synonymous with Merino breeding around Wellington for generations.
The chance to expand came in 1996, when a then-family partnership comprising Chad, his brother, father, uncle and cousins were approached to see if they would take on the iconic Mumblebone stud, whose origins date back to 1879 when it was registered as Australian Merino flock No. 63.
“We were breeding a lot of rams at that stage,” Chad said.
“It was a pretty big step for the family business but it was just a great chance to fast-track our ram breeding aspirations.”
The transfer of the stud saw more than 4000 ewes relocated from their original home in the NSW Macquarie Valley at Warren — where their neighbours included a who’s who of Australian Merino breeding flocks, such as Buttabone, Egelabra and Haddon Rig — to Wellington.
Fast-forward 24 years to now, following a successful succession plan, Chad and Louise run Mumblebone which comprises about 4200 ewes, down from the normal 5000-head flock of 2000 stud and 3000 commercial ewes, and sell more than 400 rams a year.
The couple say this season “couldn’t be much better”, with the district receiving 425mm of its annual 600mm rainfall average in the first six months of the year.
It marks a big turnaround from the 350mm annually for the past three years, which was the driest three-year period on record.
WEIGH FORWARD
ON 4250ha of owned and leased land the Taylors run a pure Merino enterprise geared around profit drivers of high growth, reproduction and fleece value.
“We need lots of lambs and we need a high conversion of foetuses conceived,” Chad said.
“This where some more traditional breeds can fall down, they can get see a good number of foetuses but then lose a lot – as much as 40 per cent – which is a huge loss given every foetus conceived, if it is carried through until birth, is costing you 10 per cent of a ewe’s fleece weight.”
This means Australian Sheep Breeding Values, in particular for numbers of lambs weaned, but also for muscle, fat, fleece weight and quality, are strictly adhered to.
The Taylors began using ASBVs is 2004 with a three-year project of measuring the best sires and their progeny.
In the past three years they have used DNA to mother-up all lambs in the stud “which then gives us the flow-on benefits of measuring the poll gene on all lambs as well as meat-eating quality in the rams”.
“The science is amazing, in the Merino industry particularly. It has changed so much,” Louise said.
One of these changes was in 2006 — “when talk first started about consumer concerns” — with the Taylors moving away from mulesing through use of genetics.
For the 12 years prior they had been involved with Jim Watts’ Soft Rolling Skin movement to breed “a plain-bodied sheep and all the benefits that come in terms of wool quality”.
“We thought we needed to get away from mulesing and we had sheep we thought were ready to move away with, so we took the plunge,” Chad said. “It really did highlight any residual skin wrinkle around the tail and so we pretty quickly realised that if we were going to go down the non-mulesing path it needed to be on a wrinkle-free animal, not just a low-wrinkle animal … to make the program work.”
NUMBERS GAME
THE Taylors’ main lambing takes place in July-August, following a February-March joining. A second lambing in April-May “gives us a second crack at using the top sires”.
Artificial insemination has been used almost every year for the past 12 years, but now that “there’s genetic diversity across a lot of different traits” the Taylors are looking at more natural joinings with more of their own sires.
Chad said they previously joined at a ram-to-ewe ratio of 1 per cent plus one, but now worked on 2 per cent, and almost 3 per cent for maiden ewes. The size of joining mobs vary. In the past few years, due to seasonal conditions, the Taylors have joined groups of 300-400 stud ewes to syndicates of compatible rams.
Before this they were doing a lot of single-sire matings over mobs of 70-80 ewes, a practice they will reintroduce again in the future.
In line with expert advice joinings have been reduced from six to four weeks.
“A tight joining leads to a tight lambing and a tight lambing leads to more targeted nutrition and much easier management,” Chad said.
Ewes are scanned for foetuses six weeks after the rams come out, with those bearing single or multiple lambs managed accordingly. This year, the flock ewes, minus the maidens, scanned 173 per cent in lamb.
SUCCESSFUL CONVERSION
CHAD said management in a good season like this year was easy with stud ewes running in small mobs of 60-90 in an effort to convert 90 per cent of the foetuses conceived.
Chad said while they would like to run the ewes in bigger mobs for a more effective-grazing system it was a compromise they had to make when it came to juggling management groups.
Despite the dry, the Taylors recorded a lambing percentage of 120 per cent last year.
A couple of years earlier they achieved more than 130 per cent.
Lambs from AI ewes, given they are a consistent age, are weaned at eight weeks. Most lambs from the naturally mated ewes are weaned at eight to 10 weeks.
Surplus stock are drafted off. Last year the wether portion was sold weighing 44kg at six and seven months to Thomas Foods International at Tamworth.
“High reproduction with high growth and carcass traits means the wether lamb becomes very valuable, particularly when it is mixed with a high-value fleece,” Chad said. “The early sale of wether lambs is also a great way to manage stocking rates.”
The Mumblebone sheep are shorn twice a year, in November and May, with the flock ewes cutting about 3kg of 19-micron wool every six months and the stud ewes closer to 4kg.
Wool weights increased almost 1kg a head over 12 months during the drought with the Taylors investing in containment feeding to maintain their breeding stock, going against their normal tactic of “destocking and running on the country what the country can run”.
QUICKER TURNOVER
EWES were previously retained until they were six years old, but Chad admits now it is closer to five with the genetic improvement.
“The older ewes are starting to lag and there’s less efficiency in the reproduction of older ewes. They start to lose more foetuses once they hit six and fleece weights are dropping off,” Chad said.
The Taylors said there was growing inquiry for non-mulesed sheep from surplus ewe and ram sales. Mumblebone sells more than 400 rams a year to every state of Australia, stretching north to Quilpie and Longreach in Queensland, south to Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania and across to Western Australia.
Last year 72 rams went to new buyers in Victoria, mostly in the Western District. There has also been some strong overseas support from New Zealand and the Falkland Islands.
The stud hosts an on-property ram sale in the spring. Last year 200 rams averaged $2900 and topped at $12,000. This year’s sale will be held on October 1 with 240-260 rams.
Chad said the aim going forward was to keep growing numbers and he remains passionate about the Merino industry despite recent price corrections.
“It is interesting, we’ve come to back to the 75th percentile for wool and it feels like the bottom has fallen out of the market but we’ve lived at the 75th percentile for many years,” Chad said. “This is why we need a balance of traits.
“If we have a Merino that is so heavily focused on wool traits, it can heavily compromise reproduction and growth.
“So the balance of the modern Merino traits that has not just high fleece value but also high growth rate, high reproduction, high foetus conversion, taps into all avenues of profitability.”
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