A New Chapter
Over the Summer we purchased Wairere Australia from Derek Daniell. The Wairere flock has been moved across to Boonerah, Hexham. We are excited to continue breeding Wairere rams for our clients and look forward to taking the breeding program forward.
The Wairere Romney’s will be run alongside our two performance recorded flocks. We currently have Boonerah Maternals and Boonerah Supremes. The Maternals are based on Coopworth genetics and breeding philosophy, whilst the Supremes are a terminal sire founded by Poll Dorset and New Zealand Texel genetics.
Wairere has been at the forefront of developing the modern New Zealand Romney. This has helped them be the largest seller of rams in New Zealand since the late 1980s. Wairere has been marketing rams in Australia since 2005. In 2015 they made the commitment to set up an Australian satellite flock. This involved importing ewes and extensive ET programs over multiple years to build the flock up to its current size of 1500 mixed aged ewes.
Why have we bought Wairere?
They are a valuable genetic and unique resource for the Australian prime lamb industry. Wairere is a commercially focused flock that is run at high stocking rates in challenging environments. They produce consistent and even lines of sheep. Ewe lambs must get in lamb to be retained in the flock.
I visited NZ in February. The major attributes I noted from the trip were:
1. Population genetics - 7000 performance recorded Romney ewes allows greater selection differential
2. 55 years of hogget lambing
3. Sheep thriving in harsh conditions ie. steep terrain and high rainfall
4. Sheep run in large mobs, ie. 2200 ewe lambs in one mob, let the fittest survive!
Boonerah first used Romneys in our maternal program in 2015. Our biggest success with the Romney has been their easy care. We have stopped supplementary feeding our pedigree sheep above 12 months of age, all but eliminated lambing difficulties and reduced the number of cast sheep thanks to the addition of the Romney.
Lachie