Policies carefully thought through

14-07-2010 | Sandra Taylor

Not much is left to chance in Nelson and Fiona Hancox's sheep and beef operation.

One gets the impression that all farm policies have been well thought out and analysed before being implemented - like their policies of not feeding supplement and their choice of sheep genetics, for example.

The West Otago couple are the winners of the crossbred section in this year's New Zealand Ewe Hogget competition. The quality of their young stock is a reflection of a well-tuned system where feed management, stockmanship and genetic selection are given equal weighting.

The Hancox farm three properties, but it was the Romdale hoggets on their home farm Kowai Downs that took out the honours in the competition.

Kowai Downs is a 460ha (effective) rolling hill-country property wintering 5100 ewes, 1200 hoggets and 50-60 finishing cattle bought in spring. This is a sheep-to-cattle ratio of 97:3.

Nelson says the ground is heavy and not suitable for wintering cattle. Having cattle would mean the couple would have to make hay or baleage, which they are not keen to do after not having made supplement for the past 13 years.

So the focus is on the performance of the ewe flock. The couple have chosen to run Romdales because, being a medium-sized sheep, they can run more a hectare while retaining output.

As the mixed-age ewes are wintered in a large mob of 3000-3500 head on daily or two-day shifts, the ewes need to be hardy enough to withstand mob pressure and produce a good lamb.

To get the type of sheep Fiona and Nelson require, they are using Perendale and Romney rams and putting the Romney-type ewes to a Perendale ram and Perendale-type ewe to a Romney ram.

The ewes are typed-up before mating on April 17 and poorer or off-type ewes are put to Texel and South Suffolk terminal sires.

While they have bought Romdale rams in the past, the couple found they were not breeding as true to type as they would have liked.

Nelson and Fiona buy most of their white-face rams in the North Island simply because the studs they buy from tend to be larger. Because they are buying rams for all three properties, the couple need to have the numbers to select from.

They aim to buy a ram whose mother was born a twin and reared a twin and Nelson says they are really focused on the mother's maternal traits. They are also looking for above average 100 and 200-day weights.

Constitutionally they prefer a medium-sized ram with a good springer rib, good depth to the carcase and an even fleece.

In selecting their future ewe flock the couple make an initial cull of 500-600 from their crop of around 2400 ewe lambs early in January based on size and type.

The ewe lambs are shorn in mid-January because this helps stimulate growth. As the lambs are grazed on older, higher endophyte pastures, shearing helps reduce the risk of heat stress.

Over summer and early autumn, Nelson and Fiona run the weaned lambs on a shuffle grazing system which means the lambs are given a reasonably large area of the farm and are lightly stocked at just 25 lambs a hectare. This allows them to pick the best out of the pastures while the ewes follow behind cleaning up residues.

It's an old-fashioned system, Fiona says, but with only 4.5 staff managing 27,000su over the three properties, it is an easier way to ensure that lambs keep growing. If they were confined to a rotational grazing system, a late shift at what is a busy time of the year could result in a drop-off in growth rates.

Over summer the lambs are drenched every four to six weeks and Fiona and Nelson take the opportunity to keep culling the ewe lambs every time they get them in the yards.

They take out about 200 ewe lambs every month until April, based on type, size, feet, conformation, wool quality and presence of black fibres. A further 40-50 are culled in mid-May before the ram goes out and Nelson says any that haven't come through the winter well will be culled in spring and killed on the spring market.

If any two-tooths are not up to scratch they are culled before being put to the ram.

The hoggets must weigh a minimum of 42kg at mating, and crytorchid ram lambs are used as teasers before Perendale rams go out to the young sheep in June for a November lambing.

This strategy of lambing the hoggets later is one Nelson picked up from his discussion group and it seems to work well. He finds they lamb easily and require minimal shepherding, and puts this down to the hoggets getting another month to grow in spring before lambing. As the first trimester of gestation is in the coldest part of winter, the foetal size remains relatively small, minimising dystocia problems.

Because the hoggets are lambing during the spring flush they recover their body condition, so getting them back in lamb as two-tooths has not been a problem. The bottom-end hoggets are taken out at weaning and priority fed to build up condition.

While all the hoggets have the opportunity to get in-lamb, Nelson and Fiona aim for only 50%-60%. The balance are what Nelson refers to as a floating mob which acts as an important safety valve in their system.

Every two or three years this "floating" mob will be grazed off-farm in spring in order to take the pressure off the feed supply on Kowai Downs.

This allows target pasture covers of 1200kg DM/ha to be maintained going into weaning.

Finding grazing for their hoggets is never a problem because of the many dairy run-offs in their district.

Cattle are the other flexible stock class and can be sold as store if no feed is available.

While they are not getting a large number of lambs from the hoggets, Nelson says they all add to the bottom line and after having lambed as hoggets the two-tooths are better mothers.

The couple are happy with the fertility of their ewes which are scanning an average of 178% (triplets counted) and are consistently tailing 150%.

If they wanted to tail 160% consistently then Nelson believes they would have to go to composites.

"We are not prepared to go that way at this stage as they are not as hardy and we couldn't run as many per hectare."

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