Waitaki fosters lean, heavy and out-of-season lambs

Press, 13 March 1987, Page 19

Waitaki fosters lean, heavy and out-of-season lambs

Waitaki International will spend more than 5200,000 this year on sheep industry research directed towards production of lean, heavy lambs and out-of-season breeding.

The company’s livestock development manager, Mr Chris Ward, says Wataki wants to accelerate development in these two main areas and it is co-operating with breed societies, veterinarians, other private companies and Government researchers.

Perhaps coinciding with the appointment of a new public relations manager for the giant meat company, Mr Ward says Waitaki is keen to point out that the research expenditure is for the good of the whole sheepmeats industry.

"In the production of good lean, heavy lambs the breeding industry wasn’t moving fast enough, in our opinion, and it is difficult for individual breeders to identify superior sires,” Mr Ward says. So Waitaki has supported progeny testing schemes for Romneys in Canterbury, and Southland: another programme with Coopworths, Romneys and Poll Dorsets in Southland and the Canterbury Lamb Competition for the second year. The multiple breed project has more of a commercial edge to it than the Romney ones. Waitaki has a 50 per

cent shareholding in AgOvine, with Animal Enterprises holding the other half of the company. About 6000 ram lambs were assessed in early 1986 by Waitaki drafters and 40 Coopworths, 40 Romney and 20 Poll Dorset superior ram lambs selected last April and mated to representative samples of ewes on five progeny testing farms.

Lambs born from this mating were carefully identified and weighed at weaning, with a second weighing this January. They will be weighed once more before all the ram progeny are killed at the Finegand works during March. The carcase weight, GR measurement, eye muscle area and the percentages of meat, fat and bone will all be recorded and from this analysis superior sires will be identified and mated to lean ewes on a farm leased to Ag-Ovine at Thombury in Southland.

Mr Ward says the aim of the project is to have significantly superior lean sires for sale to farmers.

The Animal Enterprises side of the venture is being run by the former director of M.A.F. Research Division for the southern South Island, Dr Jock Allison.

The Canterbury Romney breeders’ progeny test is based on the Quigley brothers’ property at Westerfield, Mid-Canter-bury where 18 best-bet

lean sires were mated to representative groups of 50 ewes each and all progeny recorded, with the meat analysis to be done at the Smithfield works.

In this year’s Canterbury lamb competition wool weights and values are being taken into account as well as the rate of lean growth so that a truly representative economic return is generated.

The competition is organised by the M.A.F. and sponsored by M.S.D. Agvet along with Waitaki. It has attracted 22 entries this year, of whom five are repeaters from 1986.

The lambs are averaging 170 grams of weight gain each day, with the best entries doing 250 g a day.

The other major area of Waitaki - sponsored research and development is out-of-season production, which in most cases means early lambing.

The major requirement for lean, heavy lambs in the United Kingdom is for the three months prior to Christmas, when the bulk of New Zealand’s export lambs are still growing to an acceptable size. Waitaki is encouraging heavier lamb production in this first quarter of the meat selling year by publishing a higher-priced schedule and sponsoring specific research, mostly by the M.A.F. Late lambing work is also being fostered, such

as “two-tier” lamb production on North Island hill country where lateborn lambs are taken down country during autumn for fattening. The social effects of rams on ewes and some of the early oestrus-induc-ing techniques are being studied in several projects at research stations in the Manawatu and Nelson regions. Waitaki International has also paid the salary of a full-time research officer at the Marlborough Research Centre of the M.A.F., Mr Andrew Wells.

He is evaluating ram lambs from 16 different sources in the province for rate of lean growth on the one central property and some newer pasture cultivars are also being tested.

Marlborough’s droughttype conditions from December through February make it difficult for farmers to get lambs up to a 20 kg carcase weight with a GR of 10 to 12 millimetres, according to Mr Wells. In Seddon and Ward lambing takes place in June and July, and in other areas two months later, so that farmers can get lambs off their properties before the dry spell starts.

In the trials the feed is being supplied to lambs

during the dry period, Mr Wells says. The eight half-hecture trial blocks are stocked with 20 lambs each and sown with several types of pasture including prairie grass, clovers, fescue and chicory.

“Lambs seem to love the chicory, and it appears to promote high growth rates, but as yet we know little about its effect on carcase composition,” he says. By the end of the trial

in April or May, Mr Wells hopes to be able to advise farmers in the region on the best pasture cultivar for lamb finishing to lean heavyweight standard. Two other promising avenues for research are melatonin implants (which reportedly give early ewe cycling and inccreased fecundity) and insulin assays (because of the relationship between insulin production and fat deposition). The insulin work might lead to an

early test for the susceptibility to fat deposition, believes Dr Roy Bickerstaffe, of Lincoln College. Mr Ward sees no shortage of topics in which Waitaki could become involved, including a further examination of the Merino crosses for early lambing. Mr Ward is also managing the WX production programme and speaking regularly to many groups of farmers throughout the country.

He feels he has received a generally sympathetic hearing during a difficult time for the sheep industry.

Farmers are willing and quick to respond to market signals, he says. But the short term, misleading signals such as the better prices for P grades than Y grades, must be separated from the longer term signals which insist that future profitability is based on leaner, larger carcases.

And could he forsee a time when that advice might change?

“Well if it did, I would have to resign, bcause everything I do and say is based on the need for New Zealand to produce leaner, heavier lambs for cutting.”