Breed sought after as a terminal sire

15-11-2003 | Not Specified

Southdown rams are being increasingly used by commercial sheep farmers as terminal sires for early-maturing lambs and for hogget mating.

Unwanted and criticised only two decades ago, Southdowns have regained popularity because the body shape of the modern sheep has completely changed.

Now found in work on all types of farms from Northland to Southland, Southdown rams sell themselves.

Southdown breeders have difficulty in meeting the ram demand, and within the past decade the number of registered flocks has increased from a low of 70 up to 90 today.

While the drop in popularity in the 1970s and 80s saw many breeders give up, Southdown enthusiasts fortunately retained enough ewes, containing bloodlines with potential for greater frame size, to be able to change according to commercial imperatives.

“Southdowns weren’t alone in having an overfat problem in the 1970s and 80s,” says long-time breeder and councillor John Wynyard, of Warkworth.

A stable yet progressive council, focused on promoting the breed, encouraged those who wanted to follow the market demand for bigger, leaner terminal sires. In contrast, in England, the home of the Southdown, the breed is now on the endangered list.

Here long-time studs with bigger sheep, like the Medlicott’s Clifton Downs and the nearby Punchbowl Stud, dispersed in 1977, became the source of bloodlines to develop the modern Southdown.

Canterbury breeder David Wyllie also made an intense effort to stretch and lift his Southdowns, and his Gatton Park rams were keenly sought by other breeders here and internationally.

A Southdown Society decision some 20 years ago to introduce an objective measurement class for a pair of ram hoggets into competition at the annual Royal Show has really paid off. A commercial sheep farmer and a commercial lamb drafter join with a breed-appointed judge to asses the ram hoggets, with the aid of ultrasound measurements of eye muscle area (EMA).

Breed stalwart John Macaulay also came up with a formula to take EMA one step further, when back length was combined with EMA, liveweight and fat cover to estimate the muscle volume of live rams. This is called the “meat score.”

“It was a very genuine attempt to involve sheep farmers in the Southdown judging process and show them what genetic progress is being made while at the same time providing competition among breeders on a commercially relevant basis,” Wynyard says.

That commercial focus was uppermost in the mind of Chris Medlicott, Bill’s son, when he founded Tasvic stud in 1977 with a ewe from the Punchbowl dispersal, while still at school, and began his commercial farming career.

“My dad and grandfather (Jack) were also commercial farmers first, and stud breeders second,” he says.

The mean lamb kill date is very important for commercial farmers wanting to get lambs away before lack of summer feed restricts their ability to finish.

“Top farmers in every district are using Southdown rams now, because of their concentration on speed to lamb maturity.”

Southdown lambs can be drafted at any time, even when the weather goes against you.

Now selling 100 rams each year, to both stud and commercial clients Chris repeats the oft-heard assurance:

“I would never sell a ram I wouldn’t use myself.”

A Canterbury breeder with a strong commercial sheep farming background, Colin Smith, at Cust, is another who puts that personal guarantee behind every one of 50 rams he sells each year.

Smiths’ stud, founded in 1943, now 25 years under Colin’s management, is back up to 125 ewes from a low of 50 when the breed was unpopular. His commercial flock base is Corriedale and Romney-Corriedale and he puts Southdown rams over an early mating group to achieve quick maturing lambs on the ground in late July.

These are targeted at the lucrative early-October chilled lamb premiums from Alliance.

Colin expects to get 300 lambs away in early October, at 12 weeks age, up to 18kg carcase weight. Further up the South Island, Merino and Halfbred sheep farmer Peter Molineaux, Marlborough, mates 600 ewes which are destined to be annually drafted the following summer with Southdown rams from the Jordan family’s Willowhaugh stud.

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