Call For More Prolific Ewes

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31167, 17 September 1966, Page 10

Call For More Prolific Ewes

“I feel that in New Zealand we will have to get more prolific ewes than we have at present for our better pastures,” says Mr P. G. Morrison, of Darfield, in his official report on his visit to Britain last year- under a Nuffield Foundation travelling scholarship.

“We have developed great dual-purpose sheep in this country, but undoubtedly world markets in the future will favour the meat producer, and with rising costs we will have to have greater meat production an acre.

“No doubt we have the breeds in New Zealand at present capable of much greater meat production, and I feel the Government should be spending a considerable amount of money studying the fertility of our present breeds of sheep and conducting trials with some imported ones.

“British breeders have used sheep from Europe which are capable of producing twice as much milk in a lactation

as any of their own breeds, and these genes have been acquired much more rapidly than would have been possible within any one breed by progeny testing.”

Some research workers in Britain, he said, envisaged the low country sheep producer of the future using more prolific ewes, lambs being weaned early and being fattened either indoors with grain or on worm-free pastures. In addition, the hill farmer might run more prolific ewes, selling his store lambs at a few weeks of age to grain producers for fattening indoors as is at present done with cattle There were many hundreds of traditional stud breeders in the United Kingdom, he said, some of whom were now progeny testing. They had found a difference in converse ratio of up to 50 per cent within a stud. Some top breeders considered that progeny testing and showing went together, showing being an advantage In knowing the “type” which the breeders were aiming for. Mr Morrison said Mr Oscar Colburn, the noted English breeder, had a stud of Clun

Forest ewes which be improved by progeny testing, but in order to obtain some features which were not possible within that breed he had imported more prolific sheep from Europe and had now produced a breed capable of a 200 per cent lambing. At the moment the traditional breeders were battling against scientists, computers and imported breeds. Men

such as Colburn envisaged the future with a nucleus of stud breeders using computers and having agents selling their stock throughout the world.

Whether this happened or not was of secondary importance. The fact that British sheep farming was on the move and would be much more productive in the future was the important lesson for New Zealand.