Omeo’s Darren Hayward is building his flock in the shadow of Mt Hotham, using Pendarra bloodlines with the occasional infusion of Round Hill Merinos.
He currently runs 2500 sheep, including lambs, on 445 hectares of sandy loam over clay country. Pasture improvement is applying 10-20 tonnes fertiliser annually.
The breeding flock is 750 Merino ewes; and 150 Border Leicester-Merino cross maiden ewes joined to Poll Dorset terminal sires.
Mr Hayward aims to build that to a flock of 2000 adult Merino sheep – ewes and wethers – but still had to improve some country to support that number.
His business is about producing wool. His current clip is 50 bales of average 18.5 Micron, 5-6kg skirted fleece.
Soundness in the sheep is important. “I’ll keep breeding Merino lambs out of the ewes if they’re still sound and cutting a good fleece. I’ve got a fair number of ewes that are seven-years-old,” Mr Hayward said.
“The Pendarra rams are terrific all round, good sheep. They’re bred locally so they do well in this country and weather conditions. We get long, white stapled wool out of the flock. I’m not worried about cutting heavy fleeces, I’m interested in the quality of the wool. We keep it simple here.”
Mr Hayward classes his own fleece and that expertise paid off with an Elders Clip of the Month award. Shearing is annual – the Merinos are shorn in November, pre-joining; the first-cross ewes on March 1, pre-lambing.
Fertility in the flock is good, with joining rates at 50:1 over a tight joining period of six weeks. Ewes are scanned to determine single, multiple or empty. He used to separate the mob and feed the ewes according to whether they carried multiple or single lambs, but stopped that practice recently.
The ewes are crutched and injected with 5-in-1 at four to six weeks pre lambing; and drenched about a fortnight before lambing.
The flock grazes pasture year round; the only supplementary feeding is 15pc protein ewe and lamb pellets, begun after lambing finishes and continued “until they’ve got green grass before them,” he said. Maiden Merino ewes have delivered more than 100 per cent lambing, two years ago during a mild winter. In an average year, at marking, lambing is usually more than 90pc in the Merino flock, 120pc in the prime lambs. “We’ve gone a little bit earlier in the past couple of years, lambing late April to end of May. We decided to stay out of June lambing,” he said. His decision has paid off in increased survival rates. While weather is one factor, the other, wild dog predation, has been offset with electric boundary and internal fences.
