The Sander family are this year celebrating a century at their Pineville farm, where they have built a successful sheep breeding operation.
Luke Sander, Peep Hill, runs the 1659-hectare property with parents James and Lesley Anne Sander, with them aiming to reach their stocking capacity of 3000 breeding ewes by the end of this year, up from 2800 at present.
Running Springvale North genetics for more than 40 years the Sander family have built a reputation on big framed, heavy cutting, nourished, bright woolled ewes, with quick growth rates on offspring.
With good returns for wool and breeding ewes, they focus solely on Merinos, aiming to constantly improve their flock.
They have also introduced a split lambing to manage the numbers.
"We do a lambing in April /May and then a lambing in August/September," Mr Sander said.
"We would struggle to lamb them all at one time so with two lambings, it breaks it up a bit that we haven't got so much pressure on one time of the year and then it sort of opens up a few more markets as well."
Mr Sander said they sell lambs in the later markets with their spring drops while accessing the first markets of the season with the suckers from the April/May drop.
"We sell all the wether lambs as store suckers straight off," he said.
"We don't feedlot any and have a big focus on having a higher lambing number and looking after our ewes.
"We hold onto our ewes - April/May drop ewes will be 18 months and the August/September drops will be about 12 months when we go through and draft the sheep we want to keep, and the seconds we sell at Jamestown market.
"We fare quite well with prices at Jamestown, getting prices around $270 -$280 per head, so it's quite good."
Mr Sander said they have been selling at Jamestown for quite a few years as JW, LA&LJ Sander and have built a name for themselves, which has attracted some repeat buyers.
"Buyers get to know our sheep especially if they have bought them before or seen them in previous years," he said. "They know we are trying to produce really good sheep year after year to keep a good reputation."
In recent years, they have been working to grow their lambing percentage.
"We have been pregnancy scanning for quite a few years and I think that has probably helped," he said.
"In 2021 and 2020 our lambing rate was about the same but before that our lambing rate was probably about 100pc."
Mr Sander said in the past two or three years, the lambing rate had taken that next step, getting up to 110 -115pc and in the past 12 months spiking above 120pc and up to 130pc.
"When we scan the April/May drops, we will scan them in about mid-February and any dry ewes out of that will go into the August/September-drop mating with the rams in March," he said.
"We put a separate tag in them if they are dry."
Mr Sander said if any ewe presenting dry two breedings in a row are sold. They also check the performance of the rams annually.
"Our sheep have certainly got better by spending more on rams - instead of picking a middle range ram we are picking more of the top of the range rams," he said.
"That seems to be making quite a difference. We put one ram to 40 ewes and when selecting rams we consider figures and appearance."
Sander shears wool five times annually.
It is hard to imagine shearing five times a year but for Luke Sander it has become the norm on their Pineville property although it can be "a bit all over the place".
"The ewes that lamb in April/May are shorn in February and the ewes that lamb in August/September are shorn in July," he said.
"They are all 12-month shearing, then the hoggets out of both drops are shorn in July as well.
"The lambs are shorn as soon as they are weaned - so the April/May drops are shorn around September and the August/September lambs are shorn in November.
"We run five different shears. We found the ewes seem to lamb easier when they are bare shorn due to not having the weight of the wool on their backs."
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