Coopworths come up trumps

14-07-2010 | Gerard Hall

More than 30 years of farming Coopworths has come up trumps for Dipton farming couple Eddie and Grace Thwaites.

Their 2010 crop of ewe hoggets has made the top six in the New Zealand Ewe Hogget competition.

The Thwaites, who have never entered a competition before, were surprised to get through the local and regional stages of the competition, let alone have their hoggets judged the winners of the national Coopworths section. They are now vying with five others for the mantle of best hoggets in the country.

One of their neighbours spurred them to enter the competition; since then, judging panels have come away on three occasions more than impressed with the couple's Coopworth ewe hoggets. As well as stacking up in the glamour stakes, the Thwaites' ewe hoggets are the glue of a sheep flock that has been consistently churning out a weaning percentage in the high 150s. More than half the sale lambs leave their property by Christmas with at least an 18kg carcaseweight (CW).

The couple own a 218ha property at Dipton West. Sheltered and with soils quick to warm up in the spring, 200ha of the farm are effective. The rest is shelter belts and the Dipton Channel, which the couple says is just a big ditch running through a third of the farm.

Their interest in Coopworths began early in the seventies when they secured the lease of 121ha of Southland Catchment Board Land at Titiroa in southern Southland. One of several stepping stones along the way towards realising their farm-ownership dreams, the Thwaites combined farming 600 Coopworth ewes and 300 18-month-old cattle on the lease block with their farm drainage business.

In 1979, they finally secured the required funds and bought The Rock, a 306ha sheep and beef farm a short drive west of where they farm now.

While it was hard work, Eddie and Grace chose the property because of its potential and its advantages as a place to bring up their four children. Seven years ago they sold The Rock and moved a short distance away to the flats, where they now run a similar number of ewes but no breeding cows.

Two years ago, after Eddie's third major back operation, the couple lightened their workload by reducing stock numbers, killing all their ewe lambs.

Since Eddie's surgery, Grace and lambing shepherd Sheree Wilson, a shepherd at Alliance's Lorneville plant, are in charge of the lambing paddocks. During lambing, Eddie keeps himself occupied feeding and mothering up orphan lambs and regrassing the swede paddock.

Ewes are more or less set-stocked for lambing, with singles on their own and 300-400 later lambing ewes held behind a wire until their due date.

Ewes are shed off depending on the weather and to match each paddock's stocking rate with the grass growth.

Consistently scanning in the high 180s (triplets not counted), ewes are simply being scanned to identify the dry-dries (last year 33) and the ewes carrying multiples.

Grace says triplets have been scanned for in the past but after a bad experience lambing them on their own they now prefer to lamb twinning and triplet-bearing ewes together.

Split into three mobs, mixed-aged ewes are all grass wintered on a mix of one and two-day shifts. The March shorn two-tooth ewes chomp away on swedes until late in July. Three weeks before lambing they are put back on grass for their pre-lamb boost.

After getting the helicopter in to deal with a heavy hit of aphids, this year's 5.6ha of Dominion swedes is holding up well. Eddie says the ewe hoggets will probably go on to the swedes when the two-tooth ewes come off.

Sheep numbers are not quite back at the levels they used to be, but this year the couple expect to lamb 1900 mixed-age Coopworth ewes, 100 more than last year.

Shorn as lambs early in February, their prize-winning 517 ewe hoggets have been run for two cycles with eight half-Coopworth-half Texel ram hoggets they lease from their ram breeders Lance and Beverly Wilson.

Due to be pregnancy scanned later in July, the hoggets will begin lambing in the first week of October. By that time the main mob of ewes will be well through as they begin lambing on August 20.

Whittled back from 613 to 517, the final selection of the ewe hogget replacements was made just before the rams were due to go out.

With more than half their surplus lambs once again off the farm by Christmas at 18kg CW plus, the Thwaites decided to sell seven paddocks of spare grass to a neighbouring dairy farmer because they considered the store lamb market was too strong.

"At the time we were in the market, the buy-sell margin only looked to be $10-$15 a lamb, so to net the same amount of cash we possibly would have had to buy and finish 3000 store lambs," Eddie says.

Three back operations also made it an easy decision.

Sharing gear with a neighbour, they make their own hay and baleage. This season they cut and wrapped 250 bales of baleage, 130 of which they expect to feed out during winter. The surplus will be sold.

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