Breeding easy care Merinos

They displayed their Carrabungla/Rogara-blood flock during the Crookwell ewe competition and Mr Hewitt took time to explain the direction they were taking in achieving optimum production at a minimum cost.

The couple breed a self-replacing Merino flock, joining 1000 to 1100 ewes and scanning for multiples and dry ewes.

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"The maiden dry ewes are given a second chance but the older dry ewes are sold," Mr Hewitt said.

"At marking we do tag those ewes who have lambed and lost and we give the maidens a second chance but the older ewes go straight onto the truck."

By getting rid of the repeat offenders in the last three years, Mr Hewitt said they had lifted their lambing percentage.

"Last year, with this drop [of ewes on display] we marked 113 per cent which is the best lambing we have had here," he said.

Mr Hewitt noted he had 440 maiden ewes and because they have reached a high level of flock ewe numbers the classing rate was higher than normal.

"We were able to go pretty heavy on them," he said.

Side samples and fleece weights from the maiden ewes were taken at shearing and entered onto the EID tags which have been used for the first time at Wongalea.

"Microns ranged from 14 up to 20, so the idea of the EID tag is to tighten that micron range up a little bit," he said.

"Our fleece weights ranged from two and half kilograms up to five and a half kilograms with 10 months wool."

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Those figures were used when the ewes were classed to take out the poor performers.

"We have gone through the maidens a couple of times with Cassie Baile (AWN Goulburn) who checks the indexes and with Ron Granger (co-stud principal Rogara stud) who has been classing our sheep for a long time."

"We go pretty hard on their feet and any with crooked feet are taken out.

"We ended up taking out 35 per cent and those ewes are joined to a White Suffolk and are retained for a while."

Retaining those ewes joined to a terminal prime lamb sire allows options of running increased sheep numbers through a good season, but if the autumn turns dry, they are a valuable mob of sheep to offer for sale.

He was pleased with the size of the maiden ewes, although he noted a few might have been a bit small but they could have been twins and will catch up.

"The mothers of this drop had been scanned at 142 per cent with 50 per cent scanned with twins so we had a lot of twins during lambing," he said.

"The twinner ewes had been drafted into separate paddocks and fed and we got a good lot of lambs."

Mr Hewitt pointed out he has not mulesed his lambs since 2006 and he didn't find it a problem, management wise.

He also said his flock had not been treated with any flystrike preventive, but he didn't have any trouble.

"I'm fortunate that I'm here all the time and I do my own crutching through a sheep handler so I can quickly clean up the ewes if they get a bit of stain," he said.

"We have been breeding this type of sheep for a while and when I select the rams I avoid any with tight wrinkle around the rear and pick the free-growing longer stapled rams with soft-handling wool with good nourishment on a good sized body."

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