Lynley Anderson, Kojonup: A production passion for breeding

By breeding top sheep for worm resistance and joining Merinos at seven-months-old, Lynley Anderson runs her WA farm with progress in mind.

A passion for growth and productivity, combined with three-generations worth of genetic improvement, has pushed Lynley Anderson and her stud, Anderson Rams, to the top of the stud breeding elite.

Running a 2250ha mixed sheep and cropping operation as well as the Poll Merino stud at Kojonup in Western Australia, Lynley returned to the family farm at 24-years-old and never looked back.

Lynley Anderson, WA mixed cropping and Merino sheep and stud farmer.

“I was a nurse and a midwife and I just went back to give my parents a hand and stayed – I’ve been fully running the farm since 2004,” Lynley said.

“I was used to being really confident and competent as a nurse so when I went back to the farm, I assumed I would know what I was doing because I grew up there, but it was very different.”

Lynley marks the third-generation on her family farm, which was bought by her grandfather in 1935, and she has inherited her father and grandfathers passion for breeding.

“I get really enthusiastic about what is possible with breeding and where we can take sheep to be more productive, robust and easy to care for,” Lynley said.

“My grandfather was really progressive and started doing objective measurements back in the mid-60s with fleece weight and body weight to put measurements into his ram selection.

“My father added eye muscle scanning and we also started measuring for worm resistance in the early 2000s.

After recognising the possibility of breeding worm-resistant sheep in 2002, Lynley’s flock is now resistant enough that only some weaners requiring drenching.

“It was a selection process – we did individual worm egg counts on the ram lambs and using that measurement to choose the lower eggs counts every year.

“Once we had breeding values we were able to make progress faster too.”

WIDER HORIZON

In the last 10 years, Lynley has doubled the size of the farm to 2250ha after leasing two neighbouring properties.

“The main reason to expand was for profitability and to spread the overhead (costs),” she said.

Lynley runs both cropping and sheep businesses herself with the help of two full-time workers and one part-timer.

The dual enterprise is split evenly between cropping and sheep, and allows Lynley to graze crops in winter when there is little to no pasture growth, and graze crop stubbles in summer to maintain good ground cover on the pastures.

Mixed aged ewes on property at Lynley Anderson's farm at Kojonup in Western Australia.

“Gross margins for sheep for the last five years have outdone crops but we still crop because there’s a really good synergy between the two,” Lynley said.

In total, Lynley runs 7000 sheep, comprising of 700 rams and 6300 ewes, including mated ewe lambs.

The business joins 5500 ewes for five weeks in February each year.

Lambing commences in July through to August, they are marked in late August to early September and weaned in November.

“Last year we marked 122 per cent of lambs to ewes mated and this year I expect to mark about 120 per cent again,” Lynley said.

The ewes and lambs are managed with a flexible approach year-to-year depending on the season and the sheep.

Generally, mixed-age ewes are run in mobs of up to 1000 over summer and autumn and then split into mobs of 200 for lambing with mated ewe weaners run separately.

Each year around 1500 wether lambs are all sold at weaning and sought after by other producers.

The sheep are shorn in December and wool is sold by auction with a Responsible Wool Standards certification which Lynley said achieves “some very good market premiums”.

Last year the business sold 165 bales of wool which averaged 18.2 microns.

The wool production is set to rise following the sale of Lynley’s Poll Dorset stud flock earlier this year whose numbers will be replaced by Merinos.

“It simplified management to just focus on the Merinos instead of having two studs,” Lynley said.

GRAZING CONTROLS

Lynley’s property is divided into 75 paddocks that average 20ha, which Lynley said is great for sheep management but not so good for cropping.

An ad hoc form of rotational grazing is employed most of the year but the stocking rate is set for lambing at 14 dry sheep equivalents a hectare with confinement feedlots and sacrificial paddocks used in autumn.

The average annual rainfall in the area is 475mm which falls mostly in winter.

Lynley said one of the biggest changes to the farm has been the grazing management.

“We used to regularly overgraze,” she said.

“Stocking rate is a big driver of profitability for sheep here but if you don’t manage the grazing there was that risk of overgrazing which restricted our pasture growth.

“We’ve always run sheep at a higher stocking rate than the district average and still our lambing percentage has increased 40 per cent in 20 years,” Lynley said.

Pasture improvement is similarly done on an ad hoc basis with most paddocks going through a pasture and a cropping phase.

Any paddock coming out of a cropping phase is planted with a fodder crop of a grazing cereal, rye grass and clover in it’s last year.

“We generally lamb into (that paddock), graze it and then let it set seed so the following year it becomes a rye grass and clover pasture – it’s a cheaper way of pasture reseeding,” Lynley said.

ALL IN THE GENES

Lynley said genetics was the most important part of the sheep enterprise.

Her breeding objective is to produce robust, productive, low-maintenance and fertile animals with sufficient body fat and energy reserves to maintain condition through seasonal feed variations and climatic changes.

Anderson ram sires benchmarked against other Australian stud sires on DP+ index.

In practice, the genetic vigour produces good carcass traits for maintaining condition and lamb survival, worm resistance, low dags, soft white wool and high fertility in the Anderson flock.

“It also means fast early growth which gives us the option to mate (Merino) ewe lambs or turn off lambs early,” she said.

Breeding for high fertility to improve lambing percentages and lamb survival has been another big change, and achievement, for Lynley over her time running the farm.

“Lambing percentages have been going up every year – this year we pregnancy scanned at 153 per cent with 54 per cent of that being multiples,” Lynley said.

The breeding focus has also meant they ceased mulesing three years ago and have had little trouble with fly strike since.

“Our sheep are plain bodied, and we have been selecting against dags and fly strike and for worm resistance for decades, so ceasing hasn’t actually made any difference to the sheep or their management,” she said.

“As a stud breeder it was important that we stopped to give our clients confidence that they could also cease mulesing if they wanted to.”

BOOM TIMES

A growing demand for productive, easy-care sheep has seen business boom for the Anderson Merino ram stud.

“The reason we started selling was because we had breeding values on Sheep Genetics that people were finding and saying ‘who are these people?’,” Lynley said.

The first Anderson Ram Poll Merino sale was held in 2014 where 57 of 60 rams sold for a top price of $2500 to average $963.

Seven years on, their sale last year sold 174 rams to full clearance to a top of $26,000 and average of $3961 – a record average price for a single vendor ram sale in Western Australia.

Lynley expects to sell about 250 rams to almost every state this year with some selling privately.

Modestly, Lynley said the rams they are benchmarking in sire evaluations across Australia are doing “well”.

Up close with one of Lynley’s animals.

Currently, five Anderson rams feature in the top 20 Merino sires on Meat and Livestock Australia’s Sheep Genetics list, and they are often the most heavily featured stud with multiple standout sires.

“We are likely the most worm resistant Merino stud in Australia, and probably the world,” Lynley said.

“Our rams are known for that and their productivity but also for their great doing ability.

“We also have a sire that is also making a mark in the eastern states and New Zealand for footrot resistance.”

Lynley is focused on improving breeding and sheep management as a long-term goal.

“One area I’m keen on at the moment is mating (Merino) ewe lambs and seeing what’s possible at a younger age.”

Lynley joins around 1000 Merino ewe lambs each year at six- to seven-months-old.

“Generally, because Merinos don’t get the growth by seven months it’s very unusual to mate them this early – they’re normally mated at 18-months-old.

“We’ve been mating them at seven-months-old for three years now and this year our ewe lambs scanned at 93 per cent.”

The Anderson genetics is driving this change with fast, early growth traits, which Lynley specifically selects for in her rams.

“By mating them younger you’re getting all this extra production off your existing ewe base – you don’t have to increase your numbers but you’re getting more lambs out of them.”