BY NOT pushing pasture or stock numbers to the maximum, Graham Armore is heading for a more productive and profitable operation at his 450 hectare property, "Marelma", near Gundagai.
"We don't carry out a lot of pasture improvement because of the undulating country," Mr Armore said.
"Our stock can graze the entire 450 hectares, but we only manage to improve about 30ha because of the countryside's makeup of rolling hills.
"We used to put single super out, but we couldn't justify the cost."
Two years ago the Armores spread single super, costing them $500 per tonne because they had to spread it by air due to the hilly terrain.
"It's not highly fertile country and we are simply not going to get the return on it," he said.
"This is why we needed to look at producing a higher percentage of good suckers straight off their mums and Australian Whites have that trait."
Mr Armore (pictured with his grandson Chase and some Australian Whites lambs) said when they were producing Dorset/Merino lambs they were getting a low percentage of lambs as suckers off their mums.
He said they had a high carryover of lambs which either requried further finishing or sold as store sheep.
"If we start getting more profitable we will start doing some of the better paddocks up," he said.
"Right now we are concentrating on native grasses such as Red Grass and Microlena and cutting back on the stocking rate instead of pushing things to the limit.
"We will see how it goes, but so far it's not looking too bad."