Fast growth in lamb contest

Press, 24 April 1987, Page 27

Fast growth in lamb contest

Spectacular lamb growth weights in the 1987 Canterbury Lamb Competition have unfortunately been accorr. panied by some spectacular overfat problems, say the organisers. The winner of the competition for the fastest rate of lean gain per day will not be announced until the final field day, to be held at Waitaki International’s Islington works at 1.30 p.m. next Tuesday, April 28. But Waitaki’s livestock development manager, Mr Chris Ward, and a Lincoln farm adviser for MAFTech, Dr Gerald Scales, said this week that competition had ended with a much greater average daily weight gain. During 1987 this had been 284 g a day for all entries, compared to 21 Ig in 1986, the first year of the competition.

Thus the average this year was above the liveweight gain of the winning entry last year — the Hall’s Suffolk and Border-Romney cross lambs which gained 252 g a day. The Hall’s sheep comfortably won the major prize, sponsored by MSD Agvet, with a lean gain of 53g a day. Despite the overfatness problems in 1987 the winning rate of lean gain is expected to be well in excess of 50g a day. One line of sheep did 482 g of liveweight each day for three weeks, said Chris Ward, a figure which suggested that some lambs in that line must have been gaining more than half a kilogram of weight and poking in more than lOkgs of clover pasture each day. All lambs had unlimited

clover, commented Gerald Scales, and the overall weight gain was from 33.5 kg average on February 12 to 48.6 kg on April 6, when the second group of 10 lambs from each of the 22 entries was slaughtered. The contest ran 53 days this year, which was way over time for optimum lean production for many ram lambs. The numbers of the final one third killed which went overfat will surprise many of the entrants and the spectators on Tuesday, promise the organisers. A good mixture of sheep breeds participated in this year’s contest and another tantalising statistic released by the organisers is that Down-sired lambs grew on average 52g a day faster than the straight-bred or longwoolled lambs, such as

Perendale, Coopworth, Romney, Corriedale and Borderdale. But the overfatness problems highlight the importance of breeding for lean meat in all breeds, said Dr Scales. He will be one of the MAFTech and Waitaki employees attempting to explain to farmers what happened in this year’s competition and how to combat excessive fat The first speaker will be the operations general manager of Waitaki, Mr Joe Ryan, followed by Mr Ward, Dr Scales, Dr Ken Geenty and Mr Mark Collins, an animal breeding adviser from MAFTech Ashburton. Mr Murray Johnston, production manager for Islington, will also speak, followed by Mr Michael Murchison, North Canterbury president of Federated Farmers.