Tarago based sheep and cattle producer, Alex Willson, has been named as the Virbac Australia’s Multimin Performance Ready Challenge finalist for NSW and the only sheep producer in the program.
Mr Willson, along with his wife, Stephanie, and daughters, Lara and Sophie, operates Kalaree Poll Merino stud and runs 35 Angus breeders of Kenny’s Creek bloodlines.
Leasing close to 1685 hectares of land that spreads across properties at Tarago and Binda, the Willsons run 3500 ewes, consisting of predominantly Merinos and some crossbreds.
Mr Willson said he chose to apply for the program due to his interest in continually improving production.
“I had been involved in an Ascend annual ryegrass trial and got a lot out of it. I am always open to opportunities that work towards improving production,” he said.
“I had never used Multimin with cattle but used the product with sheep when I was younger working on another property.”
The Multimin Performance Ready Challenge is designed to shed light on the effectiveness of trace mineral injections for cattle and sheep. It provides seven challengers with a 12-month supply of Multimin and the chance to win an overseas trip for two.
Each finalist has been teamed up with an industry leader to provide specialist on-farm mentoring around the use of the Multimin trace mineral injection.
Mr Willson will be mentored by vet and ruminant health and production specialist, Liz Bramley, from Cooinda Vet, Marulan.
The Willsons will be running an immunology trial where Multimin will be used in conjunction with a 7-in-1 or 6-in-1, and a control group monitored against that through blood tests.
“This aims to identify whether or not the use of Multimin increases the efficacy of the vaccination program,” he said.
“A trial such as this has only been done a handful of times.”
They will also be looking into whether there is an increase in fertility from using Multimin pre-joining in crossbred ewes.
Mr Willson hopes to see whether a dollar value can be placed on using Multimin in terms of response and the increase in production
“I am always interested in the dollars and cents of the products. I am interested in seeing if it works and if we can put a dollar value on using Multimin within our flock,” he said.
He said the immunology trial will commence later in the year while the crossbred fertility trial kicks off in the spring joining period.
