Staying with first-cross ewes at Collingullie

And the Riverina-based sheep producer believes his 4000 first-cross ewes are the best dams for his purpose when joined to terminal Poll Dorset rams.

On the 3500ha property purchased by his father Robert in the mid-1960's, Mr Bruckner breeds his own first-cross ewes, and preferring to source the Merino dams from western Riverna sales at Hay, Hillston or Jerilderie.

The plain-bodied Merino ewes are joined to Border Leicester rams mainly bought from the Gleneith $uperBorder$ stud bred by the Kember family at Ganmain.

"I like the first-cross ewe for their good frame size so we have ease of lambing, their fertility and we get a good sized lamb," he said.

"I have considered skipping the first-cross ewe and maybe putting a White Suffolk over a Merino which is popular but we are being rewarded well in the yards with what are doing at the moment."

The ease of lambing is a significant factor for Mr Bruckner when he said he rarely checks his ewes during lambing.

"I won't drive through them while they are lambing, I will look over the fence to check," he said.

"The first-cross ewes require minimal supervision at lambing with only a drive-by often required to make sure everything is ok".

Mr Bruckner said his father started to buy rams from the Gleneith stud in the mid-90s and it was still his first point of call where he can get a draft of the type he wants at that stud's annual sale.

"I'm looking for rams with good constitution, they have to be hardy, and I also look at their fertility and their weaning weights," he said.

"They need to have good early growth because I'm now joining my first-cross ewes at nine months."

Mr Bruckner said joining ewes as nine month old lambs is becoming more popular, especially with the focus on better nutrition during the ewe's growth stages.

"I know of a few people who are doing it and it seems to work well, we can another lambing out them," he said.

"Last year, we had 80pc of our ewe lambs in lamb which I thought was a pretty good result."

As long as you manage their weight and get them up to joinable size, Mr Bruckner said you can manage their nutrition to give them every chance as a young mother.

At Gleneith, Mr Bruckner is impressed by the amount of data which comes with the $uperBorder$ which complements the correct structure of the rams presented for sale..

"We are very lucky around this area, there are a number of very good Border Leicester studs," he said.

"But we keep going back to Gleneith because we manage to get our first-cross ewe lambs up to weight to join at nine months.

"And the rams work - last year it was a pretty hard joining season from first week of November when we put the rams in - and to the end of January we had over 400mm rain which is almost our annual rainfall.

"But we still had 93pc of our ewes joined, so the rams were out there working."

High fertility is a point of satisfaction for Mr Bruckner, when he said that after scanning only 90 ewes out of the 1300 Merino ewes joined were undetectable.

"All of our ewes are scanned for multiples, singles and undetectable, and those that are undetectable are given a second chance," he said.

"They are run as a small mob and we get a few late lambs - anything that hasn't had a lamb in its first year have already been sold, so it's not as if they can't carry a lamb."