Bay farmer reels in higher sheep performance

Hugh McDonald moves a break on this year’s kale crop, used to winter steers on his Hawke’s Bay property.

16-10-2006 | Marie Taylor

“I didn’t think I would be able to sustain it and still get lambs away off their mothers,” he says.

After re-arranging his farming systems in 1999, he’s now had four years at 140% and is getting more lambs away off their mothers than ever.

And he’s been lambing hoggets since 2000, and this is the first year they have scanned under 100%.

He’s very low-key about the progress he’s made, saying his goals are to perform as well as he can.

“I am not pushing the lambing percentage at all, I am just letting them do what they want to do.

If the conditions are right like pasture and weather, there is no reason we can’t do 150% with the ewes.”

He farms 5000 stock units on 513ha of limestone plateau country at Argyll, in the hills west of State Highway 2, halfway between Hastings and Waipukurau.

Hugh is the farming partner in a family business with his father Ewen and brother Graham and his wife Chris, who live in Rarotonga. He and his wife Rose, a Hastings nurse, have two children, 14-year-old Madeline and 11-year-old Reuben.

He’s the third generation at Ardgour, which his grandfather took up in 1909. “So we’ve got a centenary coming up soon.” He has a friend from Waipukurau who works part-time on the farm.

In 1970 the farm doubled in size when the next-door property was added. And until 1999, they also leased a block of 364ha from the Te Aute Trust, when they decided instead to invest more in the home farm and get it running as well as can be.

Previously it had just been ticking over, and in 1999 a major programme of development with fencing and fertiliser was begun.

“We reduced our size and made this more efficient.”

Stocking rate was reduced from 12 to 10 su/ha, and from 1996 they brought in high index Wairere Romney genetics.

“Prior to that if we got 100% lambing we were celebrating.”

Hugh says there are no secrets to what they’ve achieved with their sheep.

“We’ve always been a Romney flock, and used Feilding rams. We weren’t happy with the performance of our sheep and went on quite a few ram walks. We had a look at the Wairere rams because we have a friend who farms next door. It’s like the Swiss Alps compared to here, and they were doing 135% with no lambing beat. I was impressed with that and impressed with the way they picked their rams.

“I thought I would give the Wairere

• Continues from p49.

genetics five years, and wanted to get to 120%, which I would be happy with.”

Now they run a stable flock of 2400 mixed-age ewes including two-tooths, and 700 hoggets went to the ram this year. It’s a conventional breeding and finishing operation, and they only finish other lambs if they’ve had a poor lambing.

The back quarter of the farm, which is higher at 400m, is exposed to the southeast winds, which can be a problem if they hit at lambing.

Prior to tupping with mixed-age ewes a terminal mob of 400 is drafted off to mate with South Suffolks from next door neighbour Burke Olsen. South Suffolks are also used over the hoggets.

The terminal mixed-age mob has a scanning percentage around 160%, while the main flock scanned at 176%. Its highest scanning has been 182%.

Up to 1000 lambs are drafted straight off their mothers after 12 weeks at 15kg - capturing the early premiums.

“We don’t dock the singles, as they go straight on the truck early in November, and we don’t breed from them.” The remainder of weaning occurs throughout November.

This year has been a test of the boundaries for the hoggets, Hugh

says.

“I have always fed them as much as I can. This year I didn’t drench them prior to tupping because the faecal egg counts were reasonably low and they were grazing paddocks the bulls had been on.

“I thought I was giving them enough feed, but I also wanted to find out what the boundaries were - and I did. They had been scanning up to 118% but this year scanned at 93%, a 25% drop. Our highest previous lambing percentage with them has been 90% to hoggets mated.”

Wairere stud principal Derek Daniell says Hugh’s performance belies the move to composites to improve lambing performance, as getting 90% is “pretty damn good”.

They were also a bit light this year, weighing only 38kg in March, six weeks before tupping, when the toxo vaccine is administered. Other years they have averaged 42kg at that time, he says.

When they went to the ram this year on May 1 they probably averaged 42kg, compared with 45kg in other years.

The hoggets are flushed at tupping and then go onto maintenance feeding, and don’t lamb until October. They are shed out every second day onto paddocks with about 1500kg DM/ha.

He doesn’t have any secrets about hoggets, and says he’s talked to people like Vet Services Hawke’s Bay in Waipukurau for support.

As well, Ardgour runs 140 Angus breeding cows, and all their progeny are finished. “We have 65 yearling bulls, and about the same number of heifers. The bulls are sold from 18 months at 320kg average, and we top that up with another 50 Friesian bulls, which go at 300kg at 20 to 24-months of age.”

Hugh grows about 30ha of crops a year, of which this year 10ha is Sovereign kale and 20ha is Pasja. The kale is used to feed the yearling bulls from July to October.

  Printable View