Titirangi Station’s plan minimises risk in the dry

Station manager Pop Milner, left, discusses the operation with Rere farmer Grant Hickling, centre, and Whangara farmer Charlie Seymour, right. Photo: Peter Andrew

01-03-2010 | Marie Taylor

Weaning lambs earlier and heavier helped Titirangi Station cope better with the summer dry.

As part of the Sheep for Profit programme, station manager Pop Milner added 3kg to lamb weaning weight. This enabled more flexibility to sell bigger lambs, averaging 34.7kg, up 6kg from the previous year.

The lambs were sold earlier at 34 days to sale compared with 71 days, freeing up feed for ewes for mating.

Titirangi achieved a record 131% lambing in 2008 also.

Other changes Milner made at Titirangi was to quit his retained lambs earlier, thus reducing competition for feed. As a result, average mating weights of the two-tooth ewes lifted by 6kg from 2006 to 2008.

To manage the facial eczema risk on the coastal hill country he now does intensive pasture spore counting.

This means the ewe replacements can be given safer feed, and their growth rates during autumn are then much better.

The farm now buys eczema-tolerant three-quarter Romney Finn cross rams from Piquet Hills, and the progeny of these are starting to come through the flock, Milner says. Facial eczema readings began after New Year, but are still low.

Another move has been to put the hoggets on to crop at this time of the year. This summer it is an 18ha block of brassicas.

Policy changes were made to target a 130% lambing, and to increase lamb weaning weight to 29kg liveweights. Other aims were to sell more lambs off their mothers, and to grow out hoggets better to improve life-time performance. The scanning target for two-tooth ewes is now 135%.

AgriNetworks' Andrew Cribb helped develop the plan, aimed at minimising the risk of the dry summers and ensuring ewes were set stocked for lambing.

The target carcaseweight for sale lambs was reduced from 17kg to 15kg. In the third year of the programme Titirangi achieved its lambing performance target without dropping lamb weaning weight. They had high lamb survival, and as planned, 35% of the sale lambs were sold off their mothers at an average of 34kg liveweight.

In September last year the ewe hoggets weighed 46kg and were well on track to meet their two-tooth mating weight of 58kg for this year.

Milner found the programme straightforward, and a good challenge. Because the farm is also involved in the Tairawhiti Land Development Trust's Hikuwai Uawa Monitor Farm group, it has been a double-whammy of learning.

The Hikuwai Uawa programme brings together four Maori incorporations around Tolaga to lift capability and profit levels, with discussion groups, farm visits and performance targets.

While Titirangi has pulled out of the Sheep for Profit, it is continuing with the Hikuwai Uawa programme this year.

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