TERENCE Klug, Killarney, Flinders Island, Tasmania, said local farmers are changing up their enterprises from wool to prime lamb operations.
“In our area, we’ve seen a tremendous reversion from Merino or wool enterprises, to prime lamb productions,” Mr Klug said.
“Now it is just the exceptional Merino flocks that are left, with the majority of flocks producing prime lambs.”
Mr Klug, and daughter Kate, originally ran a Merino flock, but now run about 2500 Merino cross White Suffolk cross Poll Dorset sheep, on their 1200-hectare property.
He said they’re looking to breed a well-muscled, early maturing lamb, with high reproductive rates in the ewes.
Mr Klug has bought rams from Paul Day at Sunnybanks White Suffolk and Poll Dorset stud at Penguin, Tasmania, for the last three years.
He said Mr Day’s rams are vigorous sheep, and help him achieve great results.
“Paul Day and his efforts are well recognised in the show rings, he’s very well respected as a breeder, we’re very pleased with the quality of rams we get,” he said.
“They’ve well and truly helped us achieve our objectives, they’ve got nice, big frames, are very fertile, and help us at best reach a 150pc lambing rate.”
He said lamb survival is heavily dependent on weather patterns in winter.
“We generally join for four weeks at 1 to 50 ewes, for a July/August lambing, which means we can get about 75pc of lambs processed before winter sets in,” he said.
“Last year, one week of miserable weather killed about 300 of our lambs, but if we can get the weather working with us, and ewes in order, we should be able to hit the lambing percentage that we’re after.”
They aim to produce a 50kg live weight lamb, and process lambs at local abattoir, Flinders Island Meat.
Mr Klug said the current season has been excellent.
“We’ve had a good season, a good soaking, the other night we received another 17mm of rain,” he said.
“The grass is just waiting to jump out of the ground.”
He said he’s looking forward to start harvesting.
“We’re probably lagging a week or two behind in growth pattern, but as soon as the sun comes out, and temperature gets to 18-22 degrees, we’ll be embarrassed by the amount of feed we’ve got,” he said.
Mr Klug said he is planning on decreasing his number of breeding ewes.
“We run a mixed operation, and we’re looking to increase our cattle, and ease off some of the ewes,” he said.
He also uses sustainable grazing.
“We rotate large mobs of stock, and rest paddocks for at least 40 days,” he said.
