Andrew Dufty is gradually changing his sheep flock from Merinos to have more and more Coopworth crosses.
Mr Dufty and wife Kim farm at Melville Forest, north-west of Hamilton.
They concentrate of sheep on their 1457-hectare farm (of which about 202ha is not available for agriculture) and do some cropping for pasture management.
Their 6000 breeding ewes are now about half Merinos and half first-cross Coopworth-Merinos. They also have replacement ewes.
“We’ve been on Coopworths for about 10 years and we’ve continued thanks in part to the strong lamb prices,” Mr Dufty said.
The other big drawcard for the Duftys was the the Coopworth’s fecundity.
This ability for the ewe to produce more lambs has seen the flocks lambing percentage increase drastically.
“The lambing percentage traditionally of Merinos was somewhere in the mid 80 per cent, but with Coopworths we’ve been getting in the high 140pc or close to 150pc.”
He said he thought there was further upside to this increase as the couple plans to increase the usage of Coopworth genetics.
They now put Poll Dorset lambs over their Coopworth-Merino ewes but Mr Dufty said when they “run out of replacement Merino ewes” they plan to put Coopworth rams back over half of the (then all cross-bred) ewes to breed replacements and continue to use a terminal sire.
The ewes are scanned and then split into those carrying singles and twins. The twinners are run in smaller mobs of up to 200 on the paddocks with the most grass.
Mr Dufty said they’re a bit flexible about when the rams are put out depending on the season – for example in the past two years they bought it back a month as they came out of a dry spring.
This season, however, is looking “tremendous”.
“There’s plenty of water in the dam and plenty of feed,” Mr Dufty said.
Coopworth rams are put out at 1pc plus one and the Poll Dorset rams, depending on the age of the ewes, are put out at about 2pc.
They tend to sell as many of the lambs over the hooks, but the end market for the lambs also depends on the season.
Mr Dufty said they sell the lambs as suckers and they usually target the domestic trade lamb range of 18-22kg carcase weight, but the past two poor seasons have seen them sold lighter for export into the Middle East.
“Right now, we’re looking to get the majority sold by mid-November and ideally not matter the year, we would like to have as many lambs as possible, say 90pc or more, sold before Christmas.”
Coopworths
- The Coopworth is recognised for its excellent mothering ability.
- Coopworth ewes are attentive and protective mothers, with high milk production, good udder and teat conformation.
- Self-replacing mitigates the disease risk of buying in prime lamb ewe replacements.
- Ewes cut about 5kg of 32-35 micron wool