September Newsletter 2023
What a difference 12 months can make! Don’t need to go to the show to get a ride on a roller coaster, just work in agriculture. Seasonal and market ups and downs have always been a part of agriculture in Australia and it’s what makes it so challenging and rewarding. The current conditions are just highlighting the importance of having the most profitable easy care livestock enterprises we can to be able to weather the less favourable years.
Being able to minimize labour and feed costs are some of the key reasons we have been breeding the type of easy-care, dual-purpose merinos we have been for the last 20 years.
The last 12 months has seen some exciting developments at Gunnegalderie. Nextgen Agri has been employed to help with data management and independent measuring of traits. Some of the traits being measured include body and breech scoring, wool character and colour, as well as foot structure. This data is all collated and presented so we can monitor how each sire is performing. The data presented in this way allows us to pick up breeding trends that may be missed if just looking at the sheep up the race.
We’ve also implemented the full genotyping of all stud sheep. This gives us greater accuracy with data leading to better breeding decisions and outcomes.
The introduction of some exciting new sires from some of the countries leading breeders has given us some great linkage allowing us to measure ourselves accurately against the rest of the industry as well as adding some excellent carcass traits. It has also accelerated our transition to polls. All the rams in the sale team this year are either polls or light scurs. There are no horned rams in the sale this year.
EARLY GROWTH + FAT + MUSCLE
It is important when selecting rams to ensure that high growth figures are matched with high muscle and fat figures to prevent breeding animals that are large framed and poor doing.
The Gunnegalderie catalogue offers a rare opportunity to buy rams that are trait leaders for early growth (PWT and YWT) as well as fat (YFAT) and muscle (YEMD).
YFAT + YEMD = Doing Ability
We consider these traits to be the most important for having a profitable, easy care merino.
We have also continued our push for increasing worm resistance with all our ram lambs individually WEC tested again this year with the help of Ritchie Cartwright from Specialised Livestock Services. We are also in our 3rd year of not drenching any adult stud ewes. Putting more pressure on breeding a low maintenance sheep.
Ram sale
As far as the ram sale goes, we are excited to be offering 150 rams for Auction on Thursday 12th October at Gunnegalderie. All rams will have comprehensive ASBV data, fleece measurements and are Gudair vaccinated. There has been no foot paring or trimming on any sheep.
We have made excellent progress on the poll front with all sale rams this year being either polls or light scurs. There are no horned rams in the sale team this year.
This years sale rams are looking great with ASBVs to match. The 150 sale rams average:
TWELVE MILE STUD TOUR
The 12 Mile stud tour is on again this year on Wednesday 13th September. It’s an excellent opportunity to view over 1000 modern, dual-purpose sale rams from 4 studs on the one day within 20km of each other. All our rams will be penned in their sale lots with all their ASBV data available. Our 12 month old ewe lambs will also be on display.
We look forward to catching up with you at one or both of these events. If you would like any further information, feel free to give us a call. We will be posting more updates and preliminary ram data on Facebook and Instagram in the coming weeks.
Geoff & Carla
