Vicky and Tony Geddes of Holbrook goes for growth

The Geddes have broken apart pieces of their operation’s puzzle to fine-tune each stage of production and management, and in doing so, doubled the stocking capacity and output of ‘Yallock’.

When benchmarking began a decade ago, a Pandora’s Box of opportunities was opened in areas the business was struggling to perform.   

In 2005, the Geddes began designing a business for the future, identifying productivity gains to turn the business around.

“We wanted to create a business that stood on its own two feet, on its business figures rather than riding on (land) appreciation,” Ms Geddes said.  

It’s this meticulous self-evaluation attitude which has ensured the Geddes investments were returning the best gains.

Their DSE is about 25000 with their 8000 ewes joined by other followers and lambs. That increase has come through investment in pastures and breeding.

Depending on feed and markets, 300 to 700 cattle are also traded annually. Cattle trades and choices to finish lambs were assessed based on potential return on investment and only occur if thresholds were reached.

Mrs Geddes, who runs the family’s sheep operation, said at the recent LambEx conference in Albury, their operation was high input but the results were worth the time and effort.

“If we were going to run a high DSE per hectare business we need to put cash and intellectual investment into figuring out how to take the best practice management and put together a really resilient system,” she said.

“We live in an area of high land values, we need to make sure we are getting healthy returns on the value of those assets managed.”

They identified their poor genetics as an area which could provide quick and easy gains.

“We designed the sheep we thought would be profitable going forward and stepped out into the market to see if we could buy that package,” Mrs Geddes said.

“At the time, being ten years ago, there weren’t the number of studs around breeding the animal we wanted with Australian Sheep Breeding Values (ASBVs).”

The initial 1800-head flock was made of easy care Merinos, “everything else was pretty uneventful”.

They decided to breed their own rams, and created a 250 head nucleus of ewes where they conducted an intensive Artificial Insemination and Embryo Transfer program with progeny tested sires to fast track genetic gains.

“We work on the principal we either need to be producing a comparable product to the market, or better,” she said.

About every three years they purchase semen in an effort to inject certain genetic bundles and improve targeted traits.

Their breeding program has cost on average $14,500 per year, which includes AI/ET programs, semen purchases, muscle scanning and fleece testing costs, equating to less than $1000 per ram that would need to be purchased annually.

“All lambs are tagged at birth and data for the whole cohort is submitted to Merinoselet to maximise ASBV accuracy,” she said. 

“All the rams we keep are in the top 25th percentile of the index we use. We also have the benefit of a surplus of rams, so we can join at higher percentages if we require.” 

She said there was also the genetic power of having a ram battery that can have full brothers, half brothers or cousins, which gives speed and consistency in the commercial flock’s genetic gain.

They only used sires that were back by accuracy ASBV’s and focused on genetics that would produce a free growing, plain bodied fine animal with high clean fleece weight, positive fat and muscle and high fertility.

“In the past we haven’t necessarily chased fertility, but by ensuring we have a balanced animal we are now consistently scanning  above 145pc foetus potential to ewes joined in our mature ewes,” Ms Geddes said. 

“Our 2800 older ewes joined to a terminal sire scanned at 164pc to ewes joined this year, which is really starting to push the potential of a fine wool merino.”

These results are even more impressive considering the Geddes’ only join for four weeks in their self-replacing merinos and five weeks in their terminals. 

When considering purchasing terminal sires genetic selection was simple, a live lamb on the ground was the main aim.

Birthweight is her first ASBV filter and then Ms Geddes chased high yearling growth, muscle and neutral to positive fat. 

“It gives a fairly easy doing trade lamb I can finish in seven to nine months,” she said.

Better genetics and better management has resulted in an extra 20pc of lambs at Yallock, while the introduction of Lifetime Ewe Management principals has boosted a further 10pc of lambs marked to ewes joined.

Ewes are condition scored in January for a March joining and nutritionally managed based on their pregnancy scanning and condition score.

“Because we have all the pieces of the puzzle fitting together and forming a balanced picture, we now start to see higher reproduction performance per animal in our system and that is throwing up a few conundrums in our per hectare system,” she said.

“We are scanning a higher proportion of twins, while that is great as a number on a piece of paper, it does put pressure on our system and our ewes particularly.

“In older ewes it is resulting in lower fleece weights, more metabolic disorders and higher ewe mortality. 

“These production losses are overcome if you get a high percentage of live lambs at marking, but if you are not converting those foetuses then the system becomes very inefficient and wasteful.”

The operation is 80pc highly developed perennial pastures, with a substantial focus on getting their feedbase and species mix right throughout the year to cater to support their high stocking rate.

Mrs Geddes said with Holbrook land values relatively high, and effectively you pay for rain, it was important to convert that asset into dry matter.

About 80pc of the farm is assessed each year for critical phosphorus (P) levels, with gibberellic acid used in winter to get lambing paddocks in top condition and strategically looked at the feedbase to determine when feed was needed.

Depending on price and return on investment urea will also be used as a tool to strategically boost late autumn/winter feed pre lambing.

She said P investment had increased 30pc in the past decade which had roughly doubled the dry matter produced.

“The combination of dual purpose crops, new phalaris cultivars and gibberellic-acid has effectively eliminated our winter feed gap,” she said.  

Winter canola has come into the system in the past 2 years, which Ms Geddes said showed rapid winter lamb growth rates for lambs, combined with a really good recovery for grain. 

“We are still grappling with having enough high protein feed in summer, but adjusting our and our agronomists expectations around summer actives and backed by the work from Evergraze we are increasing the hectares of summer actives in the system,” she said. 

“We are offsetting the economics of shorter persistence time by the high return of the feed in that critical summer period and the additional benefits in the cropping rotation.

“The ha balance of perennial summer actives and annually sown summer forages is something that we are still exploring the economics of.

“Our feed base is what drives our whole system.”