Ashley Dene’s recovery lies with heavy lambs

Press, 23 September 1988, Page 19

Ashley Dene’s recovery lies with heavy lambs

By

DAVID LUCAS

A back to basics approach on the Lincoln College light land sheep farm, Ashley Dene, is showing encouraging signs of putting the farm on the road to recovery.

Ashley Dene suffered large financial losses in recent years — up to about $40,000 in 1986 — as the full effects of massive inflation and plummeting prices tore the heart out of the farming community. The farm’s policy of a high stocking rate, which peaked at 13 stock units per hectare in 1979, and reliance on high cost lucerne pastures paid off in farming’s good times. But these same management decisions made the farm highly vulnerable to the farming downturn. The mounting financial losses caused Ashley Dene to lose direction and, like most commercial light land farms, maintenance fell behind, including pasture renovation and fertiliser application. Almost two years ago, the college decided the management policies must change if Ashley Dene was to stop falling further into the red. An already declining stocking rate was brought back further to about eight stock units a hectare, allowing costs such as supplementary feed and extra labour to be trimmed.

The farm’s supervisor, Mr Adam Spiers, of the college’s farm advisory service, believes the future of Ashley Dene lies in the specialist production of heavyweight lambs, rather than growing a large number of 13 to 14kg lambs which the farm had concentrated on in recent years.

He is pleased with the progress made so far towards that goal and describes Ashley Dene as well-suited to finishing heavy lambs. The farm’s financial performance last year — a “commercial” cash surplus of almost $6OOO — was a most successful result considering it represented a turn around

of about $50,000 since 1986, said Mr Spiers. The budget for 1988-89 shows a farm surplus of $46,000, but when adjusted to reflect the cost of debt servicing, plant replacement and drawings on a “commercial” farm the books project a cash deficit of $ll2O. The 1988-89 performance will be affected by the extended dry spell which is expected to take its toll on wool weights and lambing performance. Priority, however, will still be given to getting the pastures in good order, although fertiliser application might only reach three-quarter maintenance level. Some of the management changes already made to the farm — such as a return to maintenance fertiliser, a. switch to Border cross ewes and alternative pasture species — had not yet had a positive effect on the budget, but should start paying off in future years. Mr Spiers is confident that Ashley Dene could achieve a “commercial” surplus this season if farm spending was slashed, but he feels the farm should take a positive view of the industry and attempt to show the way to similar farms.

He concedes Ashley Dene is in the happy position of being able to take a risk in getting its facilities ready for an upturn in the farming industry, although in the end it still had to turn in a profitable performance for the college.

Getting the farm back into good order after the economic-induced rundown was taking longer than expected, a fact unlikely to be lost on farmers, but probably not fully appreciated by the economic policy-makers who will eventually be looking to the primary

sector for an export led recovery. A major change has been in the sheep breed where the farm is returning to the Border-Corrie-dale base, a breed which performed very well at Ashley Dene some years ago. Labour costs have been pruned by putting the 355 ha farm under the sole care of the manager, Mr Ken Townley, rather than leaving it as a two-man unit. Mr Townley is working long hours in an effort to get the farm back on its feet. In recent years, the farm has been home to a Booroola trial involving six breeds, run by the college’s animal sciences department. Booroola stock made up 60 per cent of the farm’s flock at one stage, making it difficult for Ashley Dene to maximise commercial returns. Now that the trial is winding down, the farm would be able to concentrate on what it could do best — produce prime lambs, said Mr Spiers. The Border cross ewe base is being established from top Corriedale ewes from Hawarden and Amberley mated to a Border Leicester ram. In the last two years, 900 top Corriedale ewes have been bought — an expensive exercise — and their first cross progeny will be the nucleus of the farm’s lamb production system by being mated to prime lamb sires. First cross ewes were renowned for their hybrid vigour and should have high fertility, good milking ability and good wool weights. A straight Corriedale flock of about 1000 ewes will be retained for producing the first cross ewes.

In recent years, the high costs associated with lucerne renewal led to little emphasis being placed on pasture renova-

tion. The consequences eventually caught up in the form of more than 50ha of virtually non-pro-ductive paddocks. At one stage lucerne covered almost 200 ha of Ashley Dene, but its comparitively short effective life of five to six years meant a sizeable area needed renewing each year. Mr Spiers said the aim now was to get the lucerne area to a manageable size — about 150 ha — and attempt to keep them in a vigorous state through proper maintenance and renewal of 2025ha a year.

Lucerne covers about 120 ha of the property now and should reach 150 ha by 1989-90. Heavier parts of the farm will be grassed down while lucerne will generally be planted on the lighter soils. Part of the 70ha irrigated block will be devoted to alternative species, such as tall fescue, prairie grass, cocksfoot, and possibly chicory. Lucerne, however, will remain the key pasture on Ashley Dene as it has proved itself as the best finishing feed for lambs under dryland conditions.

This season’s lamb crop included 1650 ram lambs which killed out at 20.6 kg average, returning $33.47 not including wool from shearing. Of these, 1500 were WX while the remainder were quit in May when feed was getting short.

“No way could we have achieved those figures without lucerne,” said Mr Spiers. The lambs were grazed on lucerne between midOctober until they were drafted. The ewe lambs averaged 13.5 kg and were worth $17.36 plus wool. The average price for all lambs (including proceeds from shearing) was $29.50.

Having proved that the farm can produce prime

lambs virtually all year round — lambs were sold in 11 of the last 12 months — Mr Spiers is keen to develop further the out-of-season supply. However, he had been unable to get meat companies to agree to a contracted supply all year round and without such a commitment Ashley Dene would be too vulnerable.

Ideally, the ewe lambs would be sold early and the ram lambs (as cryptorchids) retained for heavy weights. This year 150 ewes lambed in June, a month later than originally Intended but still early enough for the lambs to be ready for the spring trade. Prime heavy lambs last spring were worth up to $6O, but Adam Spiers does not expect that sort of money this season. Stock numbers might rise from the present 2550 to nearly 3000 if the new pastures perform as expected. Ashley Dene was well suited to heavy prime lamb production and its revitalisation was corresponding, hopefully, with the freezing industry getting its act together, he said. For the 1988-89 season, Ashley Dene has budgeted for ram lambs to be worth $25, ewe lambs $l6 and cull ewes $lO.