WHITE Suffolks are the sheep breed for a woman with a busy lifestyle - just ask Alisha Adams at Kyneton.
Alisha, 28, established her Kookaburra Park White Suffolk Stud in 2007 and now sells about 45 rams a year.
She said the breed was easy lambing and early maturing with good fertility and mothering ability.
They have to be; Alisha also runs her own hairdressing business in Kyneton and helps out with the family’s transport business and a horse training-agistment centre.
“I went into breeding White Suffolks because of their carcase muscling, easy care and hardiness,” she said.
“They have been a great sheep with a lot of great benefits.”
This included the breed’s marketability for producing terminal white-faced lambs and its suitability for maternal production.
Alisha achieves more than 150 per cent lambs marked from her stud ewes every year with the assistance of CIDRs (Controlled Internal Drug release) to synchronise oestrus.
“I often yard mate, which is good for condensed lambing,” Alisha said.
“I’ve lambed three times this year, but the lambing only lasts for a week.
“Because I am working full-time as well, this saves me having to spend six weeks worrying what is going on in the paddock.
“I’ve found that really successful, it hasn’t really affected conception or lambing rates.
“I like the ewes to lamb just once in a year, but I do early join and I did some artificial insemination in July this year.
“So anything that didn’t get in lamb, and the young ewes, I rejoined to lamb in spring.
“They get two chances (before 18 months of age) and if they don’t get in-lamb then they are out.”
Alisha puts a high selection emphasis on twinning in the stud flock with ewes pregnancy scanned to identify twins for better nutrition, but good ewes that have single lambs are retained.
“I find people putting a White Suffolk ram over first-cross ewes want twins, but a lot of the Merino breeders don’t always want too many lambs,” she said.
Spring-drop ewe lambs that make it to 50 kilograms in their first autumn are joined for a spring lambing, which has been good for increasing the rate of genetic gain in the flock, she said.
Up to 80pc of the ewe lambs have conceived most year, with up to 130pc lambs marked from the pregnant ewes.
“I find them quite good little mums; I’ve never had any problems with them rejecting lambs,” Alisha said.
Alisha started breeding sheep when she was 12 years old, but always had an interest in Suffolks and the meat industry.
Her first sheep were Suffolk and Suffolk-cross ewes, with their black-faced lambs sold to generate pocket money.
“With Dad having the transport business and working around the saleyards a fair bit, I bred a few lambs and I would always sell my own lambs to buy Christmas presents and things like that,” she said.
“The reason I went into the White Suffolks was because of their marketability.
“I know when I was selling the black-faced lambs I got annoyed with losing money ($10-$15 a lamb discount) because of their skin colour.”
Her Kookaburra Park White Suffolk stud started with 16 ewes from the Weaver family’s Catumnal stud.
“My interest in White Suffolks was born and I went on to purchase ewes from leading studs and have bred up to 100 breeding ewes,” she said.
The purchase of a Booloola stud ram owned by the Baker family at Baringhup, along with continuous support and assistance, has been a tremendous help in starting the stud, she said.
The sires of the 2010-drop rams for sale include Booloola 080122 and Detpa Grove 080026.
The lambs being dropped this year are by Kookaburra 090060 and Gemini 090298.
Alisha scans all her sheep for Lambplan, vaccinates the flock for Ovine Johne’s Disease and has a brucellosis-free accredited flock.
She enjoyed producing sheep that would perform in the paddock, saleyards and in the show ring.
Kookaburra Park sheep have done well at local shows and last year showed the novice ram class winner at Hamilton’s Sheepvention, but Alisha is more focussed on breeding performance-proven sheep that work well under commercial conditions.
“I’m looking forward to breeding White Suffolks with good muscling that aren’t too lean,” she said.
“I’m not going to change what I’m breeding to win in the show ring.”
Her breeding also aimed to balance muscle and fat to help Kookaburra Park sheep perform under cold, harsh conditions.
“Being from a quite cold area, I’ve found that the leaner sheep just don’t do as well – our winters are fairly nasty,” she said.
Alisha might seem busy enough, but she is also studying to get here professional woolclassing certificate and with her partner, shearer Sam McRae, hoped to expand onto a bigger property to run a commercial White Suffolk ewe operation for prime lamb production, as well as the stud flock.
She said pure White Suffolks and White Suffolk-cross ewes were under-appreciated as commercial prime lamb mothers.
“I can’t see any fault in them in being commercial ewes, probably the only downside is you don’t quite have the wool quality of a first-cross mother,” she said.
The loss of wool quality and quantity would be compensated by getting a heavier, more muscled White Suffolk lamb off to the market earlier, she said.
“The whole idea at the moment is that I am holding back a fair number of ewes so that I can, when I get the opportunity to get some land, have a flock of ewes to breed lambs for market,” she said.
Having a commercial White Suffolk ewe flock would also allow more intense pressure on stud ewes to perform, she said.
“White Suffolks are a great breed and still on the way up the success ladder,” Alisha said.
“They suit my busy lifestyle and give me great enjoyment.”
