FOCUSING on maternal traits are becoming more important in lamb production, writes EMMA FIELD
More than ever ewes are the engine room of sheep production.
That's according to Andrew Kennedy of the Sheep Co-operative Research Centre in Western Australia, who spoke at the recent It's Ewe Time forum in Bairnsdale.
Mr Kennedy, who is doing a PhD on the trade-off between breeding sheep for meat production and ewes' maternal efficiency, advocates for a new ewe in sheep production.
"We have changed from a wool-dominant system into producing meat, dual-purpose essentially," Mr Kennedy said
"We still want to maintain some wool production because it's making up around 50 per cent of income but, at the same time, it's hard to pass up selling a heap of lambs."
Mr Kennedy, said ewes are responsible for a massive amount in a sheep production system so defining their role in the business and planning accordingly is the key to success.
"She's got to be able to produce meat and maintain her wool production," Mr Kennedy said.
"It's critical to have a plan; individuals that have different resources, they are going to have different debt levels, they really need to work out what's going to make money for them with their constraints.
"Defining what you need in your business to make money, is the new ewe."
He said the first steps for sheep producers were to understand what drove their business, define what they were producing for and outline breed objectives. "Once they have done that, it's relatively straightforward, there are Australian sheep breeding values for all of those traits," he said.
He said breeding objectives should include things like a desired reproduction rate, lamb growth, fleece weight and fibre diameter, resistance to parasites, wrinkle score and carcass size.
"Some of those traits for maternal efficiency are growth, more so than fat, and they are giving us some real benefits in terms of reproduction rate," he said.
"Taking a Merino that's classically been a wool producer and giving it some increased size and some robustness, and they are becoming a hardier sheep, (able) to produce more lambs and taking the focus off wool production."
Mr Kennedy said that by using Australian Sheep Breeding Values, producers can find a ram that fits the traits they are aiming for.
"If you are sourcing an external ram and they don't have (ASBVs), you need to demand that information," Mr Kennedy said.
He said his ideal breeding traits had gone into a project, which aims for ewes to be fertile at seven to eight months, be able to wean heavy twins and be well muscled.
They also aim for the ewe to be wrinkle and dag free, have no worms, polled, have bare legs and head, as well as produce quality wool.
"Its all achievable, we are up to our third drop," he said of his Poll Merino test mob.
But there have been some problems with the blueprint ewe, which was mated at seven months and gave birth to twins at 12 months. It failed to fall pregnant the following year.
Mr Kennedy said nutritional management was suspected as the reason for this.
He said improving ewes' reproductive rates was important for efficiency of their lifetime production.
