Livestock options open up

08-09-2010 | Not Specified

The leap in fertility from the winter grazing of dairy cows has increased scope and livestock farming options at Lorne Peak.

"Instead of being just a store stock property we'll be able to finish more and run more profitable stock classes," Matthew says.

His first priority is to lift the production performance of Lorne Peak's sheep by reducing the number of halfbred ewes in favour of a Romney-Texel flock because of their better lambing and finishing potential.

During the past five years the halfbred ewe flock has been downsized by 2000 and the number of Romneys increased by 2400. The halfbreds work in well with the breeding cows on the hill country and are cheaper to feed than Romneys in the winter but their lambing performance is disappointing at around 80%.

Another disadvantage is that the halfbred wether lambs end up competing with ewes for feed late in summer until they're sold as stores in mid-March, but for the foreseeable future, halfbreds will have a place on Lorne Peak.

"We're keeping an open mind on the halfbreds given the Smartwool contracts we have which make them reasonably competitive compared to running a crossbred ewe on the same country."

In five years Matthew would like to be running 2500 halfbreds and 8000 Romney ewes.

The raising of bobby calves for finishing as rising three-year-old steers is a post-dairy grazing development. For the past four years Jenny and Matthew have bought between 60 to 200 four-day-old bull calves. They're raised on milk and meal in the woolshed, then castrated and weaned on to the young pasture of the dairy grazing block. They spend their first winter on 32ha of kale, the second summer cleaning up pastures on the tussock hill blocks, another winter on self-feed whole crop silage, then are finished in late spring at 310kg/CW.

The success of the beef finishing is raising the question as to the future of the 320 breeding cow herd. The cows work in well with the halfbred ewes on the hill and are useful for cleaning up pastures on the lower country, but can't be pushed and offloaded as easily as bull beef.

"We could perhaps take away the breeding cows and take bulls to three years. They'd perform the same job and you can push them harder in late winter when you can't push an in-calf cow. They might fit in better with the pasture growth curve and capitalise on the spring growth."

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