A breeding system first applied to beef cattle has been adapted for Merinos, in the Murray river country around Swan Hill.
Tim and Tam Mulholland, Fairview, Noorong, took the principals behind the Stabiliser breed and applied them to Merinos, they run on their 1000 hectare property.
A New Zealander by birth, Mr Mulholland helped set up the Stabiliser bull system, first developed in America, there.
“We have modelled all our sheep genetics on that program, so we have taken the composite approach to breeding Merinos,” Mr Mullholland said. “Instead of using the breed differences, we used bloodline differences for different traits. It’s fairly easy with every other enterprise than the Merino – with the Merino, it’s a hell of a challenge, you are mad to do it. But when you look at it, we have seen the results with the cattle and composite breeds.”
He said the property started off with Wonga and Charinga blood Merinos, to produce a big, heavy cutting animal. “When we were breeding the Stabiliser, we collected data until it came out of our ears, and realised a certain phenotype came out. I knew exactly what I was looking for, to get that curve bending type shape.
“If you select for high weaning weights – we want curve bending, very high post weaning weight, and then we want them to taper off, and early puberty.”
The property now ran between 2000-3000 sheep with a key aim of linking condition score to high fertility, and ewe body weight to lamb weaning weight.
“So what we developed was an initial four way cross, with the Wonga’s and Charingas - we had fibre density and wool cut covered – then we went to the Kerri Kerri Merinos, and created a first cross, then we went to the Australian Meat Merino,” he said. Mr Mulholland said he wasn’t quite finished, adding Finn-Dorper-White Suffolk genes, for early puberty, over the Charinga base to cover wool density and length, fat and eye muscle. All that progeny, we joined as ewe lambs and bred our rams from them.
The couple run Fairview, which neighbours Tam’s parents’ Alec and Jill Martin’s property, Operina, with both blocks drawing irrigation rights from the nearby Wakool River.
The enterprise was aimed at producing both wool and meat, with ewe-lamb joining and a non-mulesed flock.
“You have to concede wool cut, but you will pick up other traits,” Mr Mullholand said.
“The animals cut 7-8kg, down to 6.5-7kg, but I aim for a 70kg ewe to cut 10 per cent of her body weight – at that mark, the younger ewes will keep coming up with fibre density. He said he did not chase microns, although they generally sat around 21-23, with some down as low as 20.
“It’s going to the point where it is getting too fine, but it is still quite a good, bold, gusty wool – we don’t really worry so much, if it’s on a type of sheep we like.”
The pasture was made up of tetraploid ryegrasses, sub, Shaftal and Balansa clovers, while Medic, lucerne, brassicas and Moby barley were also sown separately, and between saltbush.
More recently, the Mulhollands brought a 2600 drylands block, Yerinbool, near Hay, to move away from a dependence on irrigation.
“With irrigating to grow pasture, we aim for 12 tonnes of dry matter per hectare, one megalitre of water grows you a tonne of dry matter, if you achieve 12t/ha, for every tonne we produce on irrigation, it comes back to $250 a tonne.
While both the Noorong properties had the potential for 325ha, under irrigation, that had been cut back, due to the cost of water.
“A lot of things are not making long term sense, the way they are buying water back, all over the show – we thought the money was better spent on buying a dryland property.”
