Willera Merinos balances wool, meat and crop production
An emphasis on lamb survival rates, feed efficiency and a non-mulesed flock is paying off for this family farming operation.
PRODUCING wool, meat and crops is all about balance and a growth mindset for large-scale family owned and operated Willera Merinos.
That balance is as technical as the ratio of fat to muscle breeding values in a commercial and stud sheep breeding enterprise. And it is as down to earth as spreading the agricultural enterprise’s seasonal risks across three geographical areas as climate change becomes a growing risk.
Balance is also about a farming philosophy, one that Will Hooke describes as a “triple bottom line approach — people, planet and profit”.
HOOKE FAMILY
SERPENTINE
RUNS the Willera Merino stud comprising 1000 registered ewes
ALSO run 13,000 commercial ewes and crop 1200ha
OPERATION is spread across three regions in two states
WILL host their first on-property ram sale this year
The Willera family team is made up of Robert and Cathie Hooke and their three adult children and their partners — Will and Kia Hooke, Karl and Kate Hooke and Arishika and Simon Coutts. The home base at Serpentine has been in the family five generations, since 1900.
Their main enterprises are Merino wool, prime Merino lambs and sale 1½-year-old and 5½-year-old ewes, breeding ewes and stud Poll Merino rams.
The Hookes also have 1200ha of dryland crops, producing wheat, barley, canola, oats and oaten hay.
The stud is part of a surging growth in modern, truly dual-purpose Merinos, debunking perceptions of productivity and resilience in the breed.
Willera, which normally sells 130 rams privately, will hold its first on-property sale on August 30, offering 56 poll and non-mulesed rams, all of which have positive breeding values for muscle and fat.
The family’s main farm, the 3800ha Willera, sits on the Loddon River floodplain at Serpentine.
To the north they run the 12,000ha Wargam Station at Booroorban in NSW, bought in 2008.
Their latest purchase, made last year, is in southwest Victoria, near Macarthur. This 344ha farm was previously owned by dairy farmer Lisa Dwyer and family and will be a finishing block. Breeding and stud ewes are run at the two northern properties.
FINE FIGURES
THE Hookes run 13,000 commercial breeding ewes alongside 1000 stud ewes, replacements and 15,000 lambs. About 10,000 lambs are finished on irrigated and dryland lucerne in summer.
Sheep have been the firm focus for the family for “at least five years”, Will said, as it was the main profitability driver of the business.
In the Riverina, lambing percentages average 108-114 per cent and have been improving year-on-year, with survival rate of 80 per cent in twins.
At Serpentine, lambing percentages are 116-124, up from 90-100 per cent in the early 2000s.
Will attributes this lift to a breeding emphasis on fat and muscle, as well as better ewe nutrition.
Poll Merino genetics have been sourced from the Leachim stud in South Australia since 2008, and in more recent years genetics have been used from Moojepin and Wallaloo Park.
This year’s genetics offering show significant progress towards where the family believes the flock’s genetics should be.
When it comes to Australian Sheep Breeding Values, the 56 auction rams average +6.6 for yearling weight; +0.53 for yearling fat; +1.13 for yearling muscle; +19 for yearling clean fleece weight and +12.1 staple length, a balanced result, which Simon said they were “rapt with”.
“There are a lot of Merinos around that are +20 for fleece weight, but nowhere near that for muscle,” he said. “And in the sale there is nothing with negative fat and no fleece weight below +10.”
Will said the sheep enterprise was focused on “current market and society demands”.
The Hooke family viewed that as an open-faced poll with a wrinkle-free neck, long soft bulky wool with the potential to shear twice annually while turning off wether lambs 22-26kg in 10 months. And, the potential to join ewe lambs at nine months of age.
MULESING MOVE
FOR Willera, meeting changing society demands also means making the “trailblazing” step away from mulesing, Simon said.
“From a management point of view you’re really got to be on your game, but I think the benefits outweigh that,” he said. “It’s keeping an eye on worm egg counts and pasture management, ensuring you’ve got enough fibre on offer for lambs.”
While they ceased mulesing two years ago breeding towards plainer sheep began in the late 1990s.
All adult sheep are shorn every six months, yielding 3.5kg of 20-micron wool measuring 62mm in length. All younger stock are crutched and have fly prevention chemical applied.
The move to non-mulesing made regular worm testing and drenching paramount, Will said.
“We’re in our first full year of not mulesing and there is some extra work, but the benefits far outweigh the costs,” he said.
Will said a business’s ability or inability to adapt to producing livestock in a way that met society’s changing standards, such as the shift away from mulesing, could be viewed as one of the biggest threats to an enterprise’s future.
“But it is actually one of our biggest opportunities and one that we are in control of,” he said. “It just depends on how you look at it and if you put yourself in a position to get a premium.”
Such premiums are now about 50-60c/kg.
Will said the aim was breeding simple, profitable and free-growing sheep with high fat and muscle to give them resilience.
“Economically it is about maximising returns throughout put per hectare of wool, meat, and lambs,” he said. “Currently one of the largest opportunities to improve profitability in a sheep enterprise is improving lamb survival. Lamb survival is driven by high fat and eye-muscle breeding values which we can select for confidently using breeding values. Economically no one wants to see dead lambs. We all know the value lost between marking 130 per cent and 165 per cent in Merino twin ewes.”
Will said they also aimed to breed sheep that were easier for people to manage and in line with “consumer expectations around animal welfare and best practice management”.
To this end, Willera was involved in a number of quality assurance programs including Australian Responsible Wool Standards and New Zealand Merino ZQ program.
This was a clear winner, Will said with premiums and demand for non-mulesed wool “growing daily”.
WASTE NOT
WILLERA’S farming philosophy also considers the farm’s environmental footprint.
To this end, Will said the family saw it as their “responsibility to minimise our waste”.
On farm, that meant “better conversion rates of grass to meat and wool, or reducing reliance on hand feeding by breeding genetics that deliver more fat on our ewe’s backs when things are good and drawing that off when things are getting tough”.
Lambing is in April-May, to capture the best feed curve, and sale lambs are raised to meet 20-24kg weights at eight to 10 months.
“One kilogram of fat is worth 50MJ of energy; this could offer a ewe 5MJ of additional feed through peak lactation for 10 days when it is not available from the grass,” Will said.
The opportunity to make genetic gains in commercial flocks had never been greater, Will said, with flock profile testing an avenue that delivered accurate genomic breeding values.
This gave the commercial breeder a starting point to set objectives for their flock. “And, ability to confidently move forward selecting rams to meet those objectives,” he said.
“In our commercial operation we work on wether lambs growing an average 200g live weight/day and 20g of wool.
“At 700c/kg dressed weight and $1/ kg greasy for wool this is 65c of meat growth/day and 30 cents of wool growth.
“Managing those wethers, with no setbacks, will deliver a 95c/day up until 80 per cent of their mature body weight when the conversion of grass to meat reduces substantially.”
Will said Willera-blood finishing wethers on clients’ farms were “consistently dressing out between 46 and 48 per cent”.
He gave the example of surplus Merino ewes, valued at $10/kg dressed weight, as the equivalent to a 40kg ewe lamb dressing out at 46 per cent, or 18.6kg, selling as a breeder for $186.
“With the shortage of sheep in the coming years the biggest beneficiaries in rebuilding the flock will be this style of sheep,” he said.
“One that breeds more lambs, finishes lambs quickly, cuts long stylish mules-free wool, and has the ability to market eight-month-old 45kg-plus ewe lambs in the autumn that can be confidently joined and lambed down a year earlier than the traditional Merino.
STRIKING A BALANCE
IN THE past Will said the question of wool cut and quality was often raised when sheep breeders talked about high fat and eye-muscle sheep. But this had been debunked, he said.
“Data now shows this style of sheep, with a balanced breeding objective, is achieving clean fleece weights consistently in the top 10 per cent of the flock on MerinoSelect,” he said.
The combination of these breeding traits and high lambing percentages means 52 per cent of Willera’s annual wool clip is harvested off sheep less than 14 months of age.
Will said the key to a profitable sheep enterprise was growing grass and reducing supplementary feeding costs and using that grass to turn it into meat in the most efficient way possible.
“We use a lot of outside support to get advice and learn from,” he said. This includes agronomists, nutrition and genetics experts, business planners and accountants.
Simon, who joined the Hooke business in 2016 after working on stud and corporate commercial Merino properties in the NSW Riverina and Victoria, said when he joined the family, the stud was “very much headed towards producing dual-purpose modern sheep which was very different to that I was used to, working on properties that had traditional Merinos”.
He said the dual-purpose sheep gave producers the “bang for your buck out of every part of it — wool, carcass and lambing percentages, the whole box and dice — they have more do-ability and are easier to manage; the focus isn’t all on the wool”.
Simon said “in the last three years we have really ramped up our breeding objectives” including using Australian Sheep Breeding Values across the entire stud flock.
“Now we are infusing a lot of muscle and meat into what we are doing, without losing our wool cut and are shearing every six months,” he said.
This amounts to stud ewes producing up to 8kg of 19-20-micron wool per year, with fleeces measuring 65-70mm.
“Our 2017-drop rams averaged +0.6 for eye muscle; and 2018 rams +1 above average,” he said. A similar target is applied for fat. “We are looking for a ratio of 2:1 for eye muscle to fat,” Simon said.
He said NextGenAg’s genetic scientist Dr Mark Ferguson helped the stud set breeding targets.
PROOF IN PUDDING
WILLERA’S commercial flock is a clear illustration of the progress made. “Our wether lambs are hitting the 22-25kg carcass kill target weight sooner, at nine months of age, (post weaning weight),” Simon said.
“On the ewe side of it muscle and fat has a direct link to lamb survival.
“We’re seeing our lambing percentages go through the roof — up 10 per cent in three years to 122 per cent in the stud flock last year (ewes joined).”
Simon said the family had an eye on what processors and customers would want in future and lamb survival was a key animal-welfare measure the Merino industry needed to lift.
For producer profitability, better wether growth and greater lamb survival is considered “huge”. “Lambs on the ground, the more money in our pocket,” he said.
Simon believes there is still scope lift sheep productivity further, “but we need to be careful of with heavy muscling, big carcass animals is we keep our structure in check”.
“I’ve see really heavily muscled sheep break down in feet, hocks, shoulders,” he said.
“There is a limit; you don’t want sheep with extremes, you need balance.”
“We work on a 2:1 ratio with fleece weight versus growth, a +20 for fleece weight would be +10 yearling weight and about 2:1 with eye muscle versus fat.”
Simon said a growing market included composite and first-cross breeders who saw the opportunity to have not only meat but a wool value.
“More people are shifting to measured sheep, particularly the younger generation,” he said.
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