Winning hoggets: ‘Feeding is the key’

01-07-2010 | Sandra Taylor

It's all in the feeding.

Feeding, according to Nelson farmer Gary Basher, is the key to growing award-winning hoggets.

This focus on getting the feeding right has won Gary and his wife, Liz, the Romney section of the New Zealand Ewe Hogget competition; in 2003, 2006, and again this year.

"It has taken me a long time to learn that feeding is the key," Basher says.

"If you've got the genetic background in the flock they just have to be given the opportunity to express it."

The Bashers' flock is based on Mt Linton's Tan-Bar genetics and the couple have been buying rams off studmaster Andrew Charteris for some years now. Gary says the Southland climate, where the stud is based, is not too dissimilar to the climate experienced on Howard Head, the Bashers' hill-country farm, in that winters can be very cold and summers reasonably wet, so the genetics shift very well.

Basher feels his flock now has a sound genetic base with a good balance of both maternal and commercial traits.

Listing his breeding objectives, he says survivability, fertility, worm resistance and meat yield are all important and he feels they are on the right track with all these traits, although it continues to be a work in progress.

Howard Head is a picturesque property at the head of a valley in the Nelson Lakes district. Basher has literally carved the farm out of fern and bracken and thanks to his development work the property can now winter 1700 ewes, 500 hoggets, 200 breeding hinds, 180 weaner deer, 108 breeding cows, 18 R2 heifers and 112 R1 cattle.

As the hoggets underpin the future performance of their ewe flock, the Bashers spend a lot of time selecting the sheep they wish to continue with, then give the chosen hoggets every opportunity to grow and develop through feeding.

Basher begins selecting replacements from the ewe lamb crop around the middle of February. He begins with twin lambs weighing over 38kg and single lambs weighing a minimum 41kg. This gives him around 600 potential replacements.

A month later he goes through the ewe lambs, again selecting on conformation and wool type with preference given to twin lambs. This usually brings numbers down to closer to 500; these are all put to the ram. The final selection is made after scanning in July.

For the first time this year, Basher is hoping to be in a position to select only in-lamb hoggets as replacements. In previous years he has had to include 50-60 dry hoggets to keep numbers up.

While it is too early to tell, he says the hoggets have been in good condition throughout summer and autumn and went to the ram weighing an average of 50kg. A teaser ram is run with the hoggets for 20 days before the ram goes out on May 10.

This year some of the hoggets went to a Romney ram while others went to a South Dorset Down "just to see if there is any difference".

Last year all the hoggets went to a Romney ram simply for convenience, although Basher admits he is trying several options.

The hoggets are wintered on a crop of rape and short- rotation ryegrass because Basher has found the young sheep do particularly well when grass is included in the winter feed crop.

The youngsters like a bit of clean grass in their break, he says, and he finds they thrive on the combination. The hoggets also get some hay to supplement the crop.

Typically the hoggets scan around the 100% mark and lamb about 80%, so Basher admits there is room for improvement in terms of reducing wastage.

The Bashers have found that mating hoggets has improved the reproductive performance of the ewe flock and the ewes typically scan around 180% and tail 137% to 140%.

While they would like to reduce wastage between scanning and tailing, Gary says it is impossible to tell whether this wastage is genetic or environmental.

The seasons on Howard Head are concentrated in that autumn is three weeks earlier than more coastal areas of the South Island, and spring is three weeks late.

Winters are cold with virtually no growth, but summers are usually wet and this ample rain allows them to grow good feed crops upon which they rely to see them through the colder months.

They also harvest pasture surpluses in the form of hay which is an important part of the winter feeding programme.

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