Kerry Dunlop talks to attendees at the recent field day held at The Gree

Straight Furrow – December 6, 2011
By Rob Tipa

Sheep breeding is a dynamic business and respected Southland breeder Kerry Dunlop has been at the cutting edge of that development for close to 50 years.

Kerry and Kit Dunlop hosted Beef + Lamb New Zealand’s “Meat the Future” field day on their 271ha stub property, The Gree, north of Winton last month.

Mr Dunlop told about 150 participants that this season was his last lambing and the field day was his “swansong”.

He later confirmed he plans to move to Queenstown and to leave Hayden Peter, the stock manager for the past six years, to make the sheep breeding decisions at The Gree from next mating onwards.

Kerry started performance recording of his Romney flock in 1964 and joined the Ministry of Agriculture’s first computerised recording scheme in 1968.

Since then he has constantly recorded and evaluated different sheep breeds, including Coopworths, Texels, East Friesians, Poll Dorsets, Dorpers and more recently the wall-shedding Wiltshire breed.

He developed a composite breed that evolved from recording the comparative performance of various crosses of Texel, Coopworth and East Friesian bloodlines and named it Greeline after the name of his home farm and stud.

The breed has been stabilised for more than 10 years and Kerry has been exporting semen to Western Australia and New South Wales and live ewes to Victoria last season as well as supplying rams to commercial flocks on a range of country in New Zealand.

This year The Gree wintered 1663 ewes (including Hayden’s stud Texel flock), 433 ewe hoggets and 114 ram hoggets on an effective 151ha. The balance of the farm (110ha) was leased out for dairy support a few years ago.

In the 2010/11 season, 2102 lambs were processed by Alliance under its yield grading scheme for an average return on $120.07 a lamb.

The focus of last week’s farm tour was the management of the triplet-bearing mixed-age Greeline ewes and to view the ewe hoggets. The ewe hoggets that were scanned to have twins were rearing 180 per cent of lambs at tailing.

Kerry said any commercial sheep farmers scanning between 190 and 200 per cent would find about 15 per cent of ewes scanned would be carrying triplets.

He has separated triplet-bearing ewes from those carrying twins and singles ever since he started using a pregnancy scanner that reliably identified triplets.

Ewes are scanned in the first week of July and run as a single mob until the first week of August when the triplet-bearing ewes are separated from those carrying twins and singles and the twins are removed a week or so later.

Ewes carrying triplets are given preferential treatment, but are not overfed.

“I didn’t believe you could overfeed a pregnant ewe with triplets but experience shows you actually can,” Kerry told visitors to his property.

“Body condition is quite important. You can have sheep too heavily conditioned and that tends to lead to metabolic problems and possibly bearing problems,” he said.

“If you can get the balance right in the last three weeks before they lamb, you can minimise problems like milk fever, pregnancy toxaemia or bearing problems.”

Ewes carrying triplets benefit from well-established shelter belts on all boundaries because they can spread out and still produce three lambs in the roughest weather with minimal losses.

They are set stocked on sheltered, quality pastures at 12 ewes/ha, lower stocking rates than those carrying twins or singles.

Kerry said on short pasture at approximately 1200kg per hectare, the triplet-carrying ewes had to work a bit harder to get their daily feed requirements over a 24-hour period but they had very few bearing problems as a result of more exercise.

“The aim really is, if sheep have triplets, you give them every chance to rear the lambs themselves so you have three good 30kg lambs at weaning.”

Despite an overall mixed-age ewe flock lambing of 168 per cent (lambs tailed to ewes mated), there is no need to raise lambs artificially at The Gree.

Ewes with triplets either rear them unassisted of where they obviously cannot manage that, the third lamb is successfully cross-fostered on to another ewe.

The overall ewe death rate this year was very light at one per cent and lamb survival was 87 per cent of lambs tailed to lambs expected.

“So in other words the feeding levels of triplets, twins and singles much have been about right,” Kerry said.
With a high-performance sheep flock at The Gree, the aim is to match grass growth to sheep feed requirements with a safe, low-costs system.

In winter ewes are shifted every day on a 100-day rotation and get a supplement of stack silage. The silage also offers some flexibility and insurance in the event of a dry spell during the summer months.