Muller Station at the top of the Awatere Valley in Marlborough has upgraded part of its merino commercial flock to a registered stud.
Although at this stage the stud is for private use only, stud masters Steve and Mary Satterthwaite are incredibly excited about the outstanding productivity gains they are achieving in their breeding programme.
The stud was registered in 2009. The two founding sires were imported from Charinga Stud. This Victorian stud bred the sires of the Australian National Pairs Ram and Ewe (2007) and Australian Supreme Merino Ram at Dubbo. Muller Stud also includes 200 mixed age ewes selected from the station’s 5000-strong commercial flock and 75 two tooths (the first progeny by the Australian rams).
“The basis for this working was that we had a soundly bred ewe flock based purely on local Glenlee bloodlines for the last 28 years. We wanted to free up the sheep a bit from an easy care point of view. We got onto the Charinga rams by good fortune when we attended a week of ram sales in northern Victoria. We felt they were the most extraordinary sheep we saw all week.”
Their Australian classer Stuart Hodgson is very au fait with Australian genetics. Although he didn’t push Charinga, when Steve and Mary discussed these sheep he indicated the impact they were having in the Australian industry. Eventually he helped them select two rams from different Charinga families.
The Satterthwaites measure the value of stud stock by how they improve the economics of merino farming.
“Commercial farming is about making money and if you aren’t creating genetics that are commercially superior you aren’t in the right game. The results we are getting are more dramatic than I thought was possible but we are still out on a limb. We need to get one or two rams out being trialled in the commercial arena and see how they perform against other rams before we really know we have something of value to offer,” says Steve.
The stud is aiming to breed highly productive easy care Merino that suit Ice Breaker-type wool contracts and produce meat as a viable co-product.
“Ice Breaker is going out of its way to cover the spectrum of microns giving more growers the ability to produce almost exclusively for them from 16.9 micron to 20.3 micron. This means from hoggets to adults, they can have the whole flock in that micron band. It is important we are producing quality wool because for Ice Breaker to stay ahead of the competition they need very good processing wools.”
The Muller has been growing merino on contract for Ice Breaker for approximately 10 years. This experience has given them an intimate understanding of what type of sheep they need to profitably meet their customer’s requirements.
“We want to breed easy care heavy cutting 19-20 micron ewes that don’t require muesling and produce very predictable, sound, highly aligned, well nourished and soft handling fleeces.”
Carcass conformation is another key consideration.
“The top end of the ewes at Charinga are 90-100kg and the opportunity for meat as a commercial co-product is not strongly enough emphasised for merino in New Zealand. Although we aren’t aiming for our ewes to be that large, we do see this as being a truly dual purpose high quality wool merino that potentially can replace half-breds and Corriedales in a lot of the South Island hill country as well as being suitable for the high country.
“We think it is quite important that these sheep are bred under commercial conditions in true high country so we retain and even perhaps improve their constitution to support that easy care philosophy.”
The Satterthwaites believe they are well on their way to achieving their goals.
“The aim of our stud is to get superior productivity of an ideal wool type covering the spectrum 17 micron hoggets to 20 microns at the strong end of the ewes. The mean micron of our half Australian two tooth ewes (first generation) is 19.0 which is finer than our historic flock average of 20. They cut 7.3kg greasy yielding 77.6%.
“The two tooth ewes are absolutely outstanding from both a wool quality and quantity point of view. For example, we have had a wet winter and the wool handled the rain well. We want them to be suitable for as varied climatic conditions as possible.”
Eighty-five percent of the 2006 females were retained in the stud. The Satterthwaites
were so impressed with their brothers, they culled the entire ram battery and in 2007 mated all the commercial ewes with exclusively Charinga-bred two year old rams (at one to 100 ewes). The scanned the mixed age ewes at 142% in a drought year.
