Station key to Landcorp’s success

 The station is 1013ha effective, about half easy rolling country, half flat. Stud animals run on the flat: 1300 mixed age Lamb Supreme ewes, 650 Texel ewes, 180 stud Simmental cows.

The steeper country carries 2000 commercial Romney ewes which are put Lamb Supreme rams. There are also 120 commercial cows.

Lambs from the commercial flock are sold to Silver Fern Farms on contract with those of other Landcorp farms to supply UK supermarket chain Tesco to a tight specification, usually at 17kg carcase weight.

Lamb Supreme is Landcorp’s terminal ‘breed’, a composite with Romney, Texel and Poll Dorset parentage. Waikite Station manager Peter Strawbridge says it was developed specifically with the consumer in mind. “The Texel on its own probably hasn’t got the body size so that’s why the Poll Dorset was introduced, to give it more body size, including length. The Texel is a short, squat breed and Lamb Supreme’s probably four-five kilos heavier.”

That said, Lamb Supreme and Texel progeny can deliver what Tesco wants: lean, high yielding, big animals with no fat, he adds.

Electronic Identification (EID) is used extensively with all stud animals tagged. Sheep offspring are measured at weaning, eight and 12 months. “We also eye muscle scan the lambs to ensure they’ve got depth and width of backsteak and the fat content on it.”

The information feeds into estimated breeding value (EBV) calculations for breeding stock. “So if the lambs or the sheep’s progeny don’t stack up we use that information to go back and cull the parents on those EBVs,” he explains.    

Most rams produced at Waikite go to other Landcorp farms, but an increasing number are sold to private buyers. What people buy comes down to personal preference and the type of farm they run, says Strawbridge. Most Texel rams go to the North Island East Coast where they seem to thrive in the often dry conditions, something he’s had firsthand experience of: before coming to Waikite he managed Landcorp’s Tutamoe Station, north of Gisborne, where he started with Lamb Supreme rams.

“I did this because everyone else was using them but one year I couldn’t get the number of rams I wanted and I borrowed some Texels to make up my numbers and I couldn’t get over the differences in the offspring.”

Checks using EID at docking and other key timings proved the Texels were performing better in that environment and feedback from the finishing farm where his lambs were sent confirmed the advantage continued.

Strawbridge says commercial farmers coming to Waikite to buy rams can be highly critical, but he’s committed to breeding quality stock, working with Landcorp’s Focus Genetics subsidiary.

From his experience, farmers tend to like the Lamb Supremes more than the Texels, but again he says it comes down to personal preference. “We 

want the buyer to get in the pen to look at a good sheep. EBVs mean nothing until they have picked a sheep they like and then we go back to look at the EBVs. A lot of managers will ask me to pick out rams for them. If they want 10, I will put 20 in the pen then pick the best ten based on structure and then look at the EBVs.”

A geneticist works with Strawbridge, analysing stud flock EBVs and ranking animals. The top 5% are kept for Waikite, a proportion offered for sale and the remainder culled. A Gallagher TSI drafter is used to split stud progeny into five lines, with a final visual check of each. “We put each lamb up a race and let them all walk past us and we check them to make sure they are structurally 100% sound. We have to do this because EBVs don’t mean anything until you have a structurally 100% sound animal on the ground to sell.”

The same process is used with calves, with birthweight added to the data. As with the sheep, the Simmental bulls largely go to other Landcorp farms and some are sold privately.

Strawbridge describes the Simmental as a large, lean, high yielding terminal breed with progeny that suit high value markets. In Europe it’s sometimes used for dairying so an Angus-cross produces calves that grow quickly and well.

Commercial calves from Waikite go to other Landcorp farms for finishing and commercial stock always come second to the stud animals. Commercial ewes are the ‘release valve’ if feed gets tight as they take a feed cut first or are sold. “We can’t buy a stud back but we can always buy commercial back.”

Scanning for foetal age and singles, twins or triplets also helps allocate feed in a drought, he points out.

Nice to be rewarded

Peter Strawbridge was brought up on a 500ha challenging hill country farm rising to 1000m altitude about 50km north of Napier. 

After boarding at Napier Boys High, he went to Smedley Station training farm and later Massey University where he did a diploma in agriculture. Since joining Landcorp he’s done a diploma in front line management.

His first job was shepherding on Kereru Station, then 10 years at Te Rangi Station, a sheep, cattle and deer property on the East Coast. After that he headed north to Pukekohe where he managed a Hereford stud for two years before going to Landcorp’s Tutamoe Station on the East Coast, which he managed for 12 years.

He’s been at Waikite for two years, enjoying the challenge of managing the stud farms with all the extra monitoring, measuring and genetics. “It’s nice to get rewarded by the genetics, and by your own personal management style. It tests how good you are, and what works and doesn’t. Even though you have a good genetic pool, the main makeup of breeding is feeding…. Get the feeding right and the genetics are… going to produce very good progeny.”

His decisions and practices on Waikite would not differ if it were his own farm, he adds. “If you sit down and do the homework and the science behind it, every feed budget is the same on a commercial property as on a Landcorp property. 

“You have to get your animals through to a certain weight by the end of winter because when the grass starts growing you don’t want to play catch up. Every farm is a grass factory and you are growing animals whether it is for the freezing works or the store market.”