Border Leicester rams play an integral role in the McMahon family’s Merino wool enterprise, producing quality first-cross ewes that are keenly sought by repeat buyers at the annual Naracoorte feature sale.
With properties stretching from south of Parilla to north of Lameroo, management of the 15,000-hectare business, McPiggery, is a team effort by the fourth generation farming family.
All daughters and son-in-laws of the McMahons are involved in the pig, sheep and cropping enterprises, including Duane Simon, who has been managing the sheep operation for almost 10 years.
McPiggery runs 6500 Merino ewes and crops 5000ha of wheat, barley, vetch, canola and lupins, most of which is value-added back into the farm’s 1600 sow piggery as well as the sheep enterprise. They also produce hay.
Mr Simon said although the focus was still wool production, the family had used Border Leicesters for more than 12 years to help diversify their marketing options.
This year, McPiggery will offer 2000 first-cross ewe lambs at the special breeders sale at Naracoorte in November.
“Producing first-cross ewes has been very profitable for us and while there continues to be a big demand for them, we will keep doing it,” he said.
About 60 per cent of the Merino ewe flock is joined to Border Leicester rams. In the past, rams have been sourced from Johno’s stud, Keith, and more recently from the Harvey family’s Paxton stud, Western Flat.
According to Mr Simon, body type and structural soundness are vital when selecting high-performance rams. Carcase and growth traits, including weaning weight, fat and eye muscle depth, were also targeted, along with fertility. Mr Simon prefers to buy twin-born rams.
The Merino ewes are joined to Border Leicesters in October for a mid-March lambing and are scanned to identify multiples.
The first-cross ewe lambs are weaned at 12 to 18 weeks of age onto lucerne paddocks.
“We shear the ewe lambs at weaning and give them another pre-sale shear in October, which keeps them fresh and growing well,” Mr Simon said.
“The lucerne is normally sufficient, but this year I may need to supplementary feed the ewe lambs to get them to the target sale weight of more than 50 kilograms. It has been a challenging season.”
The first-cross wether lambs are sold as suckers, either on-the-hook or as store lambs, depending on the season.
Fertility focus lifts numbers weaned
Careful ewe management is the key to high conception rates and lamb survival, according to Mr Simon.
He aims to have his Merino ewes in condition score 3 pre-joining and keep them on a rising plane of nutrition throughout their pregnancy.
Ewes are separated into single and multiple-bearing flocks and the ewes carrying twins will lamb down in the paddocks with better quality pasture feed, in small mob sizes of 150 to 200 ewes.
The ewes are trailfed grain in the lead-up while hay is supplemented during lambing.
“We have a lot of perennial pastures, so we try to lamb on the veldt grass pastures – if we get any summer rain or an early break we will have green feed,” he said.
Mr Simon is achieving scanning rates of about 145 per cent in his ewes joined to Border Leicester rams, with weaning rates averaging 125pc.
“If we wean the lambs in late winter this also helps as we are coming into spring which allows the ewes to recover more quickly,” he said.
“We are also shearing every six months, which has definitely improved ewe health at lambing.”
