Tattykeel Australian Whites from Oberon pass the taste test

A NSW sheep producer’s desire to start his own breed is well and truly passing the taste test with accolades and record returns.

FOR noted stud sheep breeder Graham Gilmore, it was somewhat of an epiphany.

“It was like someone had tapped me on the shoulder and said ‘why do we want wool on sheep if all we are doing is eating them’,” he says.

It was the mid-1990s and Graham was visiting sheep flocks in Brazil, a nation to which he had been exporting genetics and live animals from his Tattykeel Poll Dorset, Texel and White Dorper flock at Oberon in central NSW for years.

“It started off as a thought bubble. We’d seen these native-haired sheep that were low maintenance, that didn’t require shearing, that didn’t produce wool that would get caught in fences and thought we could do something with them (in adapting it to Australian conditions).”

On return to Australia, Graham discussed his theory with a number of producers but was met with resistance by many who dismissed it as “crazy” pointing out that “sheep need wool to keep warm”.

“I said ‘well cows don’t need wool to keep warm, kangaroos don’t … that doesn’t make any sense’,” Graham said. “I just looked at it pragmatically and said ‘well why do we need it?’.”

Graham spent years researching and wracking his brain for a solution. He said the problem with the haired sheep across the globe lay with their goatlike structure and the Santa ines breed he had come across in South America was no exception. Also, the Santa ines couldn’t be exported to Australia due to foot-and-mouth disease concerns. So Graham concluded that he “had to go back to the future” and develop a new breed himself.

PLOTTING OUT

GRAHAM said the Dorper was an example that meat could be put on a shedding sheep, but that breed often had a tract of hair left on its back, increasing risk of flystrike. “The key to the whole show was the von Rooy sheep — more a haired sheep than a Dorper,” Graham said.

So in 2007, the Tattykeel Australian White breeding program began involving van Rooy and White Dorper rams joined to stud Poll Dorset and Texel ewes.

“They weren’t just any type of ewes,” Graham said. “This was structured, it had to be, the parameters were we had to breed towards full hair, towards black feet, towards carcass shape. They had to be white with pink skin to capture future leather opportunities, they had to breed out of season, they had to give us a reasonable lambing percentage – not a silly one – and have a balance between being fast growing and not growing too big. All those things were plotted out.”

The first crosses were born in 2008 and a large embryo-transfer program (involving 20,000 embryos since 2009) followed to rapidly increase numbers. An F2 line was developed from a joining of a White Dorper ram and a Poll Dorset ewe, the progeny of which was then joined a Von Rooy ram. Another cross was a Van Rooey ram over a Texel ewe with progeny then joined to a White Dorper ram.

Graham said the progeny of each line was then mixed “and we selected only for type”.

“And nothing has been introduced since,” he said.

Graham said he had been following sheep genetics for a long time and was sold on the benefits of line breeding, which he admitted was “frowned upon by modern geneticists”.

“We were Licorice All Sorts when we started — you could imagine, it was a hell of a mess and people said ‘you’re mad’ and ‘it’ll never happen’,” he said. “But we are not Licorice All Sorts now ... we are Jaffas ... because we have line bred away from what we didn’t want and towards what we did.”

The Australian White breed was launched to the market in 2011.

STRONG TARGETS

TODAY, lambing percentages within the 2000-ewe Tattykeel flock now hover around 140-150 per cent, with maiden ewes averaging about 110 per cent. “We had maiden lots do 140 per cent last year because of the extraordinary year,” Graham said. “We are not talking silly stuff but if you’ve got the right conditions it is possible to get two lambs a year.”

In terms of turn-off, the best Australian White lambs can produce a 25kg carcass on grass at about 16 weeks. Graham said he had experimented with growing out lambs to 40kg carcass but did affect eating quality and smell.

In fact, for Graham, eating quality was one of the biggest surprises to come out of the new breed. “We had a local Polaris dealer who has been buying a few lambs off us for years and get them processed himself. We sold him a few (Australian White) wethers and he rang up and couldn’t believe how good they tasted. He asked what we had changed?”

It prompted Graham to test his sheep for eating quality, and he found they had natural marbling, a lower melting point than other sheep breeds (similar to Wagyu beef) and increased levels of Omega 3. Tattykeel now tests its rams and their progeny for 46 different traits such as omegas, intramuscular fat and melting point.

He said melting points within his flock varied between 28C and 39C. Rams used last year – selected on type — tested 33-35C. “When the melting point is low — the omegas go through the roof,” Graham said, adding that its EPA and DHA omega levels — “which your body can convert” — were up around 79 compared to an average for lamb of 10-15.

QUALITY TRAITS

GRAHAM said Tattykeel’s eating quality traits were extremely heritable and being passed on to the next generation of lambs. “Because the genetic pool is tight, it repeats,” he said.

Graham said he joined his six best rams to randomly selected stud ewes and their progeny produced an average melting point 30.1C. The same rams were then joined to commercial ewes and their progeny averaged 31C.

The highest performing ram for intramuscular fat — and his progeny — averages 6 per cent.

To capitalise on the eating performance of their sheep — in 2003 Tattykeel Australian Whites won a gold medal in their first and only attempt at the Sydney Fine Food Awards — Tattykeel last year launched its premium Margra lamb brand. Margra, named for Graham and his late brother and business partner Martin, first started selling product online in the US. It is sold through the five-star Palazzo Versace Hotel in Dubai as well as through a retail outlet in Sydney.

“The consistency of our product is really good,” he said. “Because the melting point is all similar, whether it is a heavier lamb or a lighter lamb, it is all eating the same.”

The taste for the Tattykeel Australian Whites has also extended to the sale ring, with a “mind-blowing” production sale last year clearing 26 stud rams for an average of $23,600 and 145 flock rams for an average of $5933.

And from that “thought bubble” in South America all those years ago there are now more than 100 Australian White studs nationally. A result that’s certainly passing the taste test.

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