West Wyalong Maiden Ewe competition winners the Northeys are busy rebuilding their livestock enterprise following the drought, making changes to their management practices in order to get more lambs on the ground.
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This year Paul Northey, alongside his wife Jen and daughters Nicola, Caitlin and Emma, will join around 4500 Merino ewes.
Emma Northey, who works as an agent with Quade Moncrieff, also runs her own flock at a leased block at Tullibigeal and will join 650 ewes.
Ms Northey started her flock around five years ago with 127 of their green tagged ewes.
The Northey's numbers have built up significantly already since the end of the drought - when they were joining around 2400 ewes - but they are aiming to get back to joining a total of 6000 between the two flocks.
"We went back to joining everything to Merinos for two years, instead of putting our cull ewes to a White Suffolk," Mr Northey said.
As mixed farmers they managed to get through the first two years of drought, 2017 and 2018, feeding out their grain stored in the Weethalle silos, which they own, and sending sheep away on agistment.
"It was the third year that crippled us, we had to cut back numbers," Mr Northey said. "Last year our business was 60 per cent cropping, 40pc stock, but we want to get back to 30pc cropping and 70pc livestock."
To get back to that ratio they have had to regenerate their pastures.
"At the end of 2019 we had that many bare paddocks, but we under-sowed nearly 5000 acres with Lucerne in 2020 to get it back in shape," Mr Northey said.
Agistment as an ongoing management practice
The Northeys plan on sending their ewes away on agistment over the summer as an ongoing management practice in order to conserve their own ground cover and feed for lambing.
"They head off in December, are scanned away and come back in March," Mr Northey said.
"It sounds expensive but in the big picture it's nothing compared to your return."
Five years ago the Northeys switched to using Belswick rams after being on Austral Eden genetics for decades, but a more recent change to their operation has been their lambing and shearing schedule.
Last year they moved their lambing from April/May to May/June in a bid to improve their lamb survival rates, hopeful the later date will offer milder temperatures and more feed availability. To fit in with this change, their annual shearing was moved from August to April.
"We've been scanning ever since that service became available and our conception rates have always been 145pc to 155pc but our best lamb marking percentage for April/May-drops was 108pc," Mr Northey said.
"Our first May/June drop saw 129pc lambs of ewes scanned in lamb.
"In that there was one per cent deaths and seven per cent empties, so that brought it back to 121pc but those empties were joined to a Merino ram again and they lambed down 100pc so that brought it to 128pc."
Decreasing the need to walk to feed
Mr Northey acknowledged the significant jump would have partly been due to the exceptional season and he observed that the ewes and lambs stayed put for longer than usual after birth due to the abundance of feed.
"You would see them in the same spot day after day, they didn't have to walk for feed or water," he said.
"They say they need to stay at the birthing place for seven to eight hours but some ewes were there for 48 hours, which I think is a big factor in lamb survival."
This year they had put the White Suffolk rams in with the ewes two weeks after taking the Merino rams out instead of waiting until after scanning.
"We put the Merino rams in for six weeks, left it a fortnight and then put our Suffolks in, but the scanner can pick up on that gap," Mr Northey said.
"It just means you've got lambs on the ground five weeks earlier than you would if you had to wait until they were scanned, which is a big advantage at the other when you're looking to join them again."
Yield deduction to be made up for by lamb increase
The Northeys had been aiming to shear every eight months, in late-August and April, but decided it would be too hard to fit in with their cropping program.
"The April shearing worked in well with the later lambing so we just stayed there," Mr Northey said.
"We're going to lose some yield, in a late-August/September shearing we would get 68pc to 70pc yield and I think we'll be back to around a 60pc with the April shearing, but the benefits will be in our lambing percentages."
He said the ewe lambs were shorn in December to keep their growth rate going and then were shorn at eight months in August.
"Then we'll shear them again in April to get them into the main program.
"Young sheep grow more wool and at eight months they cut 6.7kg and the length was 92mm to 97mm."
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