South Island

As I landed in Queenstown I wondered if I had flown to another country. The South Island of New Zealand has had totally different weather than the North Island. They have not had much rain for two months and had numerous fires and very little grass growth. Many farmers have needed to sell animals early. Selling stores when they normally finish them. Many crops that have been planted are unlikely to establish very well and is predicted to be problems for the winter feed. However I seem to have brought the rain with me. My first visit on the South Island was to one of the largest stations in NZ. The station has 100,000 stock units. 38,000 ewes over 32,000 acres. The ratio of sheep to cattle is 70:30 with income 65:35. This is influenced by the stud, they sell 350 Angus bulls each year. The cattle are only really kept to groom pasture for weaning lambs onto and parasite control. They are thinking about growing this to 700 as one bull client has asked for 400-500 bulls annually. The cattle stud has been electronically tagged since 2005. The commercial herd has not but they have been EID tagging calves for the last two years. The stud measures 17 traits - calving ease, gestation, birth weight, 200 day weight (gives milking ability), 400 & 600 day growth rates, Carcass data (weight, eye muscle, rib fat, rump fat, IMF, retail beef yield), mature cow weight etc. A cow has to have a weaned calf at half its body weight e.g. 520kg cow has to wean a 260kg calf. If not they are not kept. They aim to kill steers at 18 months with a target kill weight of 300kg deadweight, 560kg liveweight. The finishing cattle are weighed once every 6 weeks and they check if they are not hitting the targets if there is a problem with worm burden or pasture. The mating target for heifers is 325kg at around 14 months and sometimes they are nearer 390kg. They have an annual sale of surplus in calf yearlings (350 heifers). They fatten and finish the barreners.
The sheep enterprise sells around four to five thousand lambs a week and aim to get them all out by March to focus on getting the ewe hoggets up to weight to go to ram and to get good grass for the ewes pre tupping. All the ewe hoggets go to the ram and they don't keep anything that doesn't go to the ram. They put 10,000 hoggets to the ram with an aim of 80% conception rate.
At weaning lambs are split through the auto drafter four ways at weaning 33kg + are killed, 30-33kg go in one group to keep an eye on and weighed regularly to see when they will be ready, then the next group are 26-30kg and then the under 26kg group, the bottom two groups wont be given much attention for a little while. They will be weighed again 8 weeks after weaning. These are not EID tagged the shedder just does it according to weight. The lambs that went to the works at weaning this year had an average carcass weight of 17.5kg. After weaning they take them through to 44kg.
The 1,500 stud ewes are run slightly different to the station ewes. All ewes and lambs on the genetic unit are EID tagged at birth.  The priorities for selecting rams are survivability, reproduction, growth, meat, dag, parasite resistance/resiliance. If there are any bad mothers or other negative remarks given to them over lambing they are killed. Before weaning they take a sample weight and aim to get an average weight of 30kg at 85days weaning. DLWG are often up at 300g with the singles sometimes up nearer 400g. The rams are sold on farm and they mostly sell 300-400 rams a year. I asked about the clients focus and 90% focus on records. Many of them are now looking at the meat trait, growth and survival with some looking at reproduction value and dags.
Animal health issues are slightly different down here to some of the farms I visited up north. Barbars pole worm or facial eczema is not a problem down here. However Nematodirus in lambs is an issues on the south island. This farm carries out regular fecal egg counts. On the stud they try to stretch out worming to cull tailenders. They would drench when about 10-20% are struggling when the rest are thriving. Every time they take a cull, weigh and look at figures per sire, number of culls per sire and weight per sire to see if they want to use that sire next year. They use 500 of the stud ram lambs on the station to assess them and check their condition after tupping. If they are in bad condition or are not happy with their performance they are not sold on as Rams.