SCANNING for pregnancy boosted coffers and lamb rates, writes COLIN TAYLOR

If the ewes are pregnancy scanned negative, those sheep are "given a bus ticket out", the result an immediate cash boost and increased lambing rates.

Stephen and wife Rhonda own Nyallo, a 225ha property at Timmering, between Kyabram and Rochester in northern Victoria.

The couple boost their income with off-farm employment in Echuca - Stephen works three days a week as an animal health officer with the Department of Primary Industries and Rhonda runs a beauty salon.

They took up farming in 1993 after living at Wallan, Stephen worked for the former Agriculture Department in Whittlesea and Kilmore shires and at the now-defunct Newmarket saleyards.

At one stage, he also managed broiler ducks for a NSW processor.

Stephen works the farm largely by himself, but contracts out his hay crops.

Up until this year, he was also doing some outside contracting on grain harvest planning and hay stacking.

He now owns a small header in partnership with a neighbour after a buying trip to Western Australia.

"The farm is 225ha and we share crop another 80ha," Stephen said.

"When we bought it, about 28ha had been lasered for tomato production, but now we've lasered it all at least once - most of it twice.

"This year, we've put in 10ha of maize for a local dairy farmer, but otherwise run virtually no summer irrigation program."

Stephen handles his own cereals and silage and harvests his own clover seed.

"We run a clover program for livestock, maybe 40-60ha, and rotate between canola, wheat and barley.

"Then, in summer, we do maize," he said.

"This year, we'll irrigate 60-80ha of nitrogen-fixing crops.

"We have about 250 megalitres of Goulburn Murray water supplied, plus we built a turkey nest dam of about 200 megalitres capacity which has certainly added value to our farm."

Last year, the couple bought 150 ewe lambs out of Western Australia to fatten, but when the market went the other way they decided to add them to their 300 Merino ewes.

"We'd have about 440 lambs here and we agist another 450 at Mathoura."

They buy their rams from breeders and join for six weeks or less in November.

"We've run White Suffolk rams over the crossbred ewes and Border Leicesters over the Merinos," Stephen said. "This might be the last year I join the Merinos to Border Leicesters as I can't seem to get them finished as sucker (lambs).

"I've watched the market and there seems to be interest in a White Suffolk-Merino as terminal dams - I'm hearing they have good wool type and are a bit finer. The few I've kept on-farm have certainly carried their weight rearing lambs.

"They're an earlier-maturing lamb and make for big, clean-faced sheep. We produce a lamb in the 24-35kg range and tend to grow for the export market, so the White Suffolks suit that market well.

"I normally sell at Bendigo.

"It's a good selling centre, but now I've got some numbers I'm starting to look more at over-the-hooks contracts."

Stephen said last lambing season was his best ever.

"We got 128-130 per cent out of the Merino ewes put to Border rams and I was pretty happy with that.

"I went back to scanning last year to maximise our efficiency - you don't want to be carrying empty ewes.

"We had a small percentage of empties, but there was a good market for them at the time.

He said scanning meant he was able to identify multiples.

"From there, we knew how all the ewes needed to be fed.

"Hopefully, by the time they lamb, in late March or April, we will have irrigated up some substantial feed on shaftal clover for them.

"That's one thing I like about scanning - you know you're feeding for a reason."