Merino DNA lifts production

Mr Hufton is a partner in the family business with his brother Charlie and their parents Mal and Louise Hufton, in their aggregation of landholdings based at Glen Ayr, Harden.

"Before we started using RamSelect our production was just flat," he said.

"We weren't going anywhere and we had thought we were buying the better rams."

Mr Hufton still applies the visual selection of his maiden ewes and engages Orange-based sheep breeding consultant Jason Southwell, to keep the Merino flock on course for conformation traits.

But he is convinced that productivity gains since 2018 can be attributed to his selection of Merino rams at Bundilla,Young, based upon their Australian Sheep Breeding Values (ASBV's) ranking in RamSelect.

"With RamSelect, our ram team data would come from the stud," Mr Hufton said.

"I enter the tag number each time I buy a ram or each time I cull a ram and it tracks all the data for you."

Mr Hufton said that to gain access to the information entered by the stud, it costs $25 a year for RamSelect, and the DNA test cost $800.

"We were going to enter a wether competition to see how our sheep compared to those entered," he said.

"But it would have cost four grand in lost income so the DNA test is cheap.

"I test a draft of ewes to see where they are at and the rams are already tested by Bundilla because the data is in the catalogue."

Prior to 2018 he was buying rams based on visual selection and his interpretation of the data in the catalogue

But in 2018 he started using RamSelect to determine his ram purchases and in the following five years he has seen an exponential increase in the productive capability of his Merino ewe flock.

"We have learnt to pay the extra money for the rams we want," he said.

"We can see for our Dual Purpose Plus Index we have moved it up 30 points."

The sheep enterprise is based on are running dual-purpose Merinos and selecting the higher rated rams for Merino Production Plus and Dual Purpose Plus, has proved the right decision for Mr Hufton.

"The only influence you can really have on your flock is the rams you buy and once we started using RamSelect it just showed we had been going nowhere," he said.

"The DNA test tells you where you are and you just can't buy rams under the average for those traits otherwise you are going backwards."

"We're in the top ten percent for the Index but that's because we have focused on buying those better rams."

Mr Hufton won't buy a ram with figures which are lower than the average and that is how he has kept his flock moving forward.

"The productivity has been increasing each year," he said.

Having a split joining has meant better use of the top rams as they get to cover more of the 6000 Merino ewes in the season.

"It tightens your genetic pool which is lifting genetics over the whole flock and the results are in the paddocks," he said.

"The number of lambs we are getting now is amazing."

His latest scanning showed 173pc in lamb - "we've never done that before," he said.