KALANGADOO prime lamb producer John Mossop has found the lift he wanted in his ewe flock by introducing the Multimeat breed.
In an on-farm trial, he has lifted his scanning rates by about 60 per cent - translating to an extra 40pc lambs weaned from the Multimeat crossbreds, compared with his main flock of Coopworth composites.
This season, his Multimeat-cross ewes weaning percentage was 173pc per ewe mated, compared with 131pc for the Coopworth composites.
The Multimeat breed has been developed by reproductive physiologist Colin Earl during the past 20 years from a number of breeds and contains the high-fecundity Booroola gene.
Rams have been commercially available for the past five years and are leased to about 50 clients across the high-rainfall areas of southern Australia.
John says multiple lambs are needed to maximise the kilograms of lamb per hectare and justify the feeding costs of the ewe throughout the year.
"The ideal crossbred is a ewe that has two lambs - one is not enough and three is too many. It is a by-product of a ewe with twins that you get more triplets but we have lifted the survival rates," he said.
In 2008 and 2009, John mated Multimeats and Coopworth composites to a group of Coopworth composite ewes to create two genotypes.
The 475 Multimeat crossbreds and 987 Coopworth composite ewe lambs were mated to maternal rams and are now 3.5 and 4.5 years old.
In 2011, with a good season, the ewes were not scanned and there was less difference in the results with the Multimeats marking 170pc and the Coopworth composites 150pc.
But in a more difficult season this year, the Multimeats were still able to conceive more lambs because of the presence of the Booroola gene.
Ewes were joined for six weeks and then scanned and separated into singles, twins and triplets and put out at different stocking rates to lamb down in late June-July.
The singles were run at 9.1 ewes/ha, twins at 7.4/ha and triplets at 5.1 ewes/ha.
The survival rates of the singles, twins and triplets were 88, 86 and 70pc respectively, which John puts down to high-quality pastures and ensuring ewes bearing multiple lambs were in the more sheltered paddocks.
Since seeing these positive results and the improvement in the Multimeat rams he has used another few rams to further boost his lambing percentages.
"There is always give and take in whatever you do, but we are seeing some wonderful lambs which grow very quickly," John said.
"There is definitely a place for them in the industry, but they need to be managed well.
"You need to have the feed to support the sheep while they are carrying the lambs.
"We will continue to use some Coopworths because we don't want to lose our other genetics with years selecting for growth rate and other traits."
John's target market is turning-off 22 to 23-kilogram carcase weight lambs to the supermarket trade.
Dr Earl says it is pleasing to see the results confirm that the composite sheep breed can comfortably achieve 160-170pc weaning rates.
"It is something we have been working at for a long time with considerable investment from ourselves and the sheep industry," he said.
Dr Earl says nutritional management in late pregnancy is the key to monitoring the pre-lambing weights of ewes.
Producers should be aiming to ensure their singles were born 5kg and above, twins more than 4kg and triplets about 3.5kg.
Low birthweights led to poor lamb survival.
He said the average lambing percentage of the industry sat at about 110pc and, while it was possible to lift lambing percentages through lowering stocking rates and more supplementary feeding, it was expensive.
Dr Earl said the only economical way to achieve higher fertility was to use prolific lambing genetics.
Using Multimeats, it was possible to achieve 100pc lambing in ewe lambs, 1.5yo 135-140pc and mature ewes 165-170pc from ewes with a Multimeat infusion.
"The biggest error a lot of people make is thinking their crossbred ewes are achieving higher percentages, but it is not being seen in the context of stocking rate," he said.
"Everything needs to be seen in terms of the final result in kg/ha."
Dr Earl said said the benchmark for mature ewes in flocks should be 80kg/ha of live lamb for every 100 millimetres rainfall, achievable using Multimeats.
"A lot of people around here are only doing half that, so there is enormous room for improvement in lamb production systems," he said.
The pure Booroola breed was criticised in the past for producing litter sizes which were too large, but Dr Earl says they have been working hard with the Multimeat to tone down the gene.
Twins are now much more common than triplets.
Elite White Suffolk sires have also been introduced to the Multimeat composite to produce more hardy rams, which will have more hardy progeny.
Multimeat rams are DNA-tested and only those that carry two copies of the Booroola gene are supplied to clients.
