Border Seen As Prime Lamb Sire

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32020, 21 June 1969, Page 8

Border Seen As Prime Lamb Sire

There might be an important place for the Border Leicester in New Zealand as a prime lamb sire, Dr D. S. Hart, reader in animal science at Lincoln College, suggested during a symposium held in Christchurch this week as part of a gathering' of Border Leicester breeders from all parts of the country.

The gathering of breeders for a series of functions organised by the No. 3 district of the Border Leicester breed committee of the New Zealand Sheepbreeders’ Association was the third of its kind to be held. Well over 100 persons attended the various functions, held during three days. The breed committee’s annual meeting was also held in Christchurch;

Dr Hart said the Border Leicester would have to face serious challenges in the future. These were coming on the fertility front and also in respect of milk production with the projected importations of exotic sheep. These were two features in which the Border Leicester had reigned fairly supreme in the past. It had occurred to him, said Dr Hart, that in seeking fertility and wool breeders might have forgotten, to some extent, that Bakewell in the early days had developed the original Leicester as a meat breed and the Border Leicester had also been developed as a meat breed. What were they doing about this? Were they pushing the use of the Border as an export lamb sire? It was his belief that it could be a leading export lamb sire with markets being developed that were not so closely tied to a light-weight 281 b lamb.

Dr Hart then proceeded to describe an incident in a prime lamb breeding project at the college in which a Border Leicester ram had been brought in to replace a ram that had not performed well where Southdown and Dorset Down rams were each given a group of 25 crossbred ewes to mate. The ram in question was one born in 1965, which some of the breeders had seen earlier in the day and were rather critical of. One prom-

inent breeder had said he would not use him, although the gathering had been told that two of the top five twotooth ewes they had seen were by him.

This “old, decrepit model,” as Dr Hart termed him, had gone expeditiously about the job of putting in lamb the

ewes that the other ram had missed, and when the results for rate of growth from birth to weaning were known it was found that the progeny of the Border ram, which had gained at a rate of 0.581 b a day, were ahead'of all the rest, and although the lambs by this ram did not make the same overall gain (at that stage they were only 92 days old compared with 115 for the

other lambs) it was also shown that on the basis of “net commercial gain” the progeny of the Border mating gave a return of 5.4 c a day compared with 4.9 c for the best of the others. In effect the Border Leicester had cleaned up the others as far as daily growth rate and net return a day was concerned. “This showed me very clearly that Border Leicester breeders have been forgetting the fat lamb propensities of their breed,” added Dr Hart. Speaking later the chairman of the Border Leicester breed committee, Mr W. A. Sommerville, of Pokeno, suggested there seemed to be fears in some quarters about a tendency for Border lambs to grade as Omegas, but Dr Hart said that this was contrary to experience at Lincoln where no increase had been found in Omegas from Border-Corriedale cross lambs

and if there was such a tendency he would have expected it to be even less with Border-Romney lambs. Mr Sommerville also told the breeders that they could have to face stronger competition. “You have heard of other breeds being imported and while most of us think that we have got the- right breed, I think we have got to be a bit more careful than we have been and possibly push a little harder,” he said.

Professor J. D. Stewart, Professor of Farm Management at Lincoln, described the experience of the college with first cross Border LeicesterCorriedale sheep on the

mainly light land and low rainfall 872-acre Ashley Dene property. Trials done by the college

17 or 18 years ago, he said, had shown quite clearly that the first cross Border Leicester - Corriedale ewe mated with a prime lamb sire gave a vastly superior performance to the straight Corriedale—of the order of a 20. per cent better lambing and a 21b advantage in lamb weight at the same age. The cross bred ewes had a better milking ability. Since then there had been a big increase in stock carried on the property. Stock numbers had gone up from two ewes to the acre to five and at the same time the relative performance of the Border-Corriedales as compared with the Corriedales had diminished. With the Border Leicester ram being mated with the poorer Corriedales to produce the cross bred ewes under a three-flock system used on the property, there had been a narrowing in the margin of superiority of the BorderCorriedales. In terms of lambing percentage the margin in recent years would have been of the order of 10 to 15 per cent.

But he had no doubt that if they returned to mating good Corriedales again with the Border ram they would return to the level of superiority established earlier. In the interests of a more flexible sheep policy it was now intended to buy in Corriedale replacements for this purpose—to a questioner Professor Stewart said that these would be east-for-age North Canterbury hill ewes. Had they been able to secure supplies of first cross ewe lambs this would also have made possible a more flexible system and in earlier days it had been hoped that specialist producers of these sheep would have been established, but while there were one or two doing this the practice had not grown widely at all. It was found that they had to breed these sheep themselves. Since the wool recession in 1966-67, Professor Stewart said, the premium for Corriedale wool as compared with crossbred wool had widened and was now running consistently about 8c to 12c a lb, depending on the quality of the sheep. The question was whether this premium more than compensated for the extra performance of the crossbreds in prime lamb production. On the basis of analyses made at the college he thought it would be true to say that with a prime lamb bringing $4.50 to $5 the financial performance of the Border-Corriedale was similar to that of the Corriedaie.

In these circumstances a number of people who had started to go into BorderCorriedales had changed their minds and gone back to straight Corriedales—he was familiar with two or three people who were in this category.

But Professor Stewart then turned to reasons why at Ashley Dene they felt they should stay in the first-cross sheep. They were trying to run 4000 sheep and 200 cattle and to do some cropping with two men only, so that it was increasingly necessary to have an ’easy-care sheep, and in this the first-cross Bor-der-Corriedale measured up very well.

Again, looking to the future, if the producer felt that meat would be a better bet than wool, then this would tend to change the balance in favour of the breed that gave best meat production.

One of the disadvantages of the crossbred ewes was that they had a higher rate of teeth wear. “We are unashamedly dedicated to a high stocking rate as an economic management measure,” he added, “and in these circumstances the rate of teeth wear is certainly higher, but it is a notable thing that even with poor mouths these sheep tend to hang together much better than the purebred sheep.” The burning question at the moment was undoubtedly the persistent and very vociferous criticism of what was cross-bred wool, said Professor A. E. Henderson, professor of wool science. Crossbreeding had come to be a dirty word in the wool trade. “I think that a good deal of this is unjustified. It is mainly using a peg to hang a hat on.”

Those who could remember the days of the depression in the 1930 s would remember that the same things were said about the New Zealand wool clip then. This seemed to be something that was a feature of a buyers’ market. However, he added, a lot of very scrappy wool was being produced in New Zealand. This had happened co-incid-ent with cross-breeding. The main motive force for this situation was the big increase in stock numbers on New Zealand farms and the need to go further into the bottom of the bucket for flock replacement where the average lambing was about 100 per cent.

Professor Henderson recalled that when he had answered questions on the subject of cross-breeding and wool at th® recent symposium

and forum on wool in Dunedin he had for the first time been applauded for an answer he had given. He referred again to the opportunity he had when Professor I. E. Coop started to breed Border cross sheep at Lincoln to study the wool of first cross and inter-bred sheep and also of the foundation stock which were in this case cast-for-age stud Romney ewes and aged Border Leicester rams with distinguished careers.

The fertility score was based on the number of lambs in relation to the number of lambings; the wool score on the weight of wool multiplied by its relative value based on fineness and grade; and lactation score was based on the growth rate of lambs. The system had been designed, he said, to give a top score of about 30 for fertility, and when this was added to the milk production and wool scores to give a top score of about 100. This was not a perfect method of selection, Dr Hart said, but it was a method that most stud breeders could put into effect themselves. The breeders were then shown the top five Border two-tooth ewes selected on this index, ewe lambs from the top five ewes and ram lambs from the top five ewes. The breeders also spent a morning visiting the Wool Research Organisation and a day visiting seven studs in the central Canterbury area.

Professor Henderson said he had not been able to find any real evidence that the inter-breeding of these sheep had increased the variability of the fleece. The only thing that had happened was that the coarseness of the primary fibres had increased slightly. In fact the cross-bred wool had had less variability than that of the pure-breds. The kind of wool that was bred on sheep depended on the parents that were selected to breed from. “The whole thing depends on good conscientious selection of the parents of the crossbred sheep. Cross-breeding as such does not generate trouble on its own account.” From time to time some pretty rough-woolled Border Leicester sheep were produced, Professor Henderson said, but in this the breed was not alone. However, just by inspection of the coats of the lambs it was possible to do quite a lot to straighten up this situation. About 12 years ago in three breeds he had graded all lamb coats for roughness on the basis of six grades and he had then followed these sheep through to adulthood. There was no question that variation or roughness in the fleece of the adult sheep could be related to the lamb coat Earlier in the day, when the breeders were at Lincoln College, Dr Hart recalled that about 10 years ago he and Professor Henderson had set out to look at the productive potential of several existing breeds of sheepsomething that there was no certainty about. When it came to evaluating productivity, he said, they had to sit down and see what constituted the ideal sheep. They had decided to concentrate on fertility, milk production and wool production in selecting sheep for their stud flocks. After some 12 to 15 pfer cent of sheep had been culled for obvious defects, he said, they had then selected—not on show type—but on the basis of the total scores for these three characteristics.