Damien Hawker is hoping to build on the success of his Omad White Suffolk stud’s first on-property ram sale last year.
When Mr Hawker started the stud when was only 15. He purchased Depta Grove and Bundara Downs ewes at mated ewe sales and also cast for age ewes from Hayelle.
He initially bred rams to use in the family’s large commercial flock, and his passion for sheep was sparked at a young age by his grandfather Geoffrey Hawker, who of a Sunday morning, would pick him up and take him to feed the ewes.
Mr Hawker continued to grow the stud at Kaniva for 10 years.
And in September 2015, Mr Hawker seized the opportunity to buy the Hayelle White Suffolk flock, from Hayden and Michelle Whittlesea, from nearby Serviceton.
The purchase of 140 stud ewes and ewe lambs essentially doubled Omad’s size. Mr Hawker now has nearly 300 stud ewes, including ewe lambs.
He also bought ram lambs from Hayelle, so had enough rams to host his first on-property sale last September. And it exceeded Mr Hawker’s expectations – thanks to support his existing clients, Hayelle’s former clients and some new buyers too.
The sale achieved a total clearance of 105 prime lamb sires at a $1210 average price. The sale draft included 73 White Suffolk rams, 11 White Dorper-Poll Dorset rams and 21 White Suffolk-Dorper rams.
He said the Dorper cross added a bit more carcase, doing ability and lower birthweight, but his main focus was the White Suffolks.
“While the cross is good, those traits are something I’m putting into my White Suffolks,” Mr Hawker said.
The family continues to use the rams Mr Hawker breeds over their 2000-ewe commercial operation, which provides great feedback on the rams’ performance.
“Where we are, our market is the sucker job, where dollars and cents add up. We want to be turning off a heavy weight sucker as quick as possible and that will hang over the hooks as well as possible and present in the yards,” he said.
“A few of the traits [I value] are growth, muscling and fat – because we’ve had a couple of really tough seasons, we’ve been using more positive for fat rams in the past five or six years, and we’ve certainly seen the result in those tougher years, just the condition we can have on lamb and they hang up.”
The family has found using a Border Leicester-East Friesian for the first cross over Merino ewes has added fertility and milk.
They crop nearly 2500 hectares of canola, wheat and barley, oats and vetch.
“Sheep are important on our farm because we’ve got a lot of mixed country, some heavy ground that gets cropped year in year out and the sheep come home on the stubbles during the summer, and then get trucked out back onto the scrub to lamb down on the lighter soils, which gives the lighter soils time to get cover back on them in the late spring,” Mr hawker said.
“Also sheep are an each way bet. We wouldn’t be where we are today if it wasn’t for the livestock.”
In the stud flock, Mr Hawker does AI every year with the best genetics he can find.
Last October, Mr Hawker purchased the $10,000 sale-topping ram from the Waratah stud’s on-property sale. He has already used two ram lambs from him to fast-track that genetic gain.
“I saw him at Adelaide show and put an earmark besides him. It happened to be that I went to their on-property sale, I still liked him and I bought him.
“He had the traits I was chasing and he’s just a good, balanced sheep, different genetics and bloodline that I was willing to give a go.”
