Hawke’s Bay farmer Sam Morrah sends stock to the works every month of the year and says measuring liveweights is key to efficient finishing.
He’s set up his finishing system with electronic recording equipment for quick and easy measuring. “It’s an investment in getting information that helps us get animals up to weight as quickly and efficiently as possible,” he says.
“Keeping a close eye on how fast animals are growing means I can match feed supply with demand and book kill space so it’s there when I need it.”
ROLLING CYCLE
Sam and his wife Hannah farm 1140ha effective on Ohineumeri Station near Waipukurau, finishing 6500 home-bred lambs and buying in 3000 further store lambs in May that are run through the winter. They also run 585 cattle.
Gone are the days when they had to record everything in a paper notebook. “I remember sitting there with my laptop, punching it into a spreadsheet,” says Sam. Now he’s got equipment to do that recording for him and software that makes analysis easy.
Each season Sam moves the lambs into a “rolling cycle” of mobs, with animals going onto crop and then off on the truck as they reach the cut-off weight. One of Sam’s aims is to make sure he’s getting the best value from 62ha of plantain and forage brassica.
“We can weigh up to 600 lambs per hour once they are educated, and we have the information right in front of us on the indicator to make decisions. We all know that lambs don’t grow standing in the yards.
“The information can also be uploaded to our farm database for further analysis. This might take a total of 2 hours – compared to a whole day with the old system.”
The weight of every Ohineumeri lamb is recorded at docking and then again at weaning or shearing, and that gives Sam a base figure to work from. If any further weight is recorded for that lamb or mob in future, he can easily calculate the growth rate. He’s drafting lambs into mobs by a combination of weight and growth rate – and then he prioritises feed accordingly.
The software helps him make comparisons so he can see what’s gone well this year – and plan to do more of it next year. He’s compared the results from two types of sire genetics over the past three seasons and now only uses the one that was giving better outcomes on his farm. He is also getting a lot of value out of being able to analyse the performance of bought-in lambs so he knows which suppliers to get more from next time.
“It’s not hard to justify the investment in equipment with the results and efficient finishing that we achieve,” says Sam. “The set-up cost of all the docking equipment and Prattley auto-drafter combined with the Tru-Test electronics is approximately $20,000. The cost of the equipment can be spread over its useful life of say 10 years. The extra labour unit needed at docking costs $1500.”
STEP BY STEP
All Ohineumeri lambs are EID-tagged at docking – which goes smoothly with the right equipment and an extra labour unit, Sam says.
“For each mob of lambs we record some basic birth data: birth rank, sire breed, dam class, birth paddock and ewe forage prior to set stocking – pasture or crop. Then we record each individual weight.” They use a Tru-Test portable wand reader and weigh scales with a Tru-Test indicator.
“The information is recorded against individual EID tags, so the lambs can then be boxed up with other mobs if needed without us losing track of where they came from.
“When we’ve got plenty of time we select mobs to come in for drenching and we get a gauge on how many lambs will be over our set cut-off weight of 34 or 35kg at weaning. We’ll look at a mob of singles and a mob of twins and maybe mobs from different parts of the farm.”
At weaning they run everything down the race and draft off the bigger ones, which then go over the weigh scales. Ewe replacements are bought in as two-tooths, so they finish all their own lambs.
This year they got 1550 lambs away straight off their mums. “That’s 200 back on last year, but they’re a kg heavier. Last year we cut off at 34kg liveweight and averaged 17.5kg carcassweight; this year because space was tight we cut off at 35kg and averaged 18kg.”
A group of the remaining heaviest lambs “get a drench and crutch and go onto the plantain. That means they could be off before Christmas and won’t hang around for shearing.” He figures they will be growing at about 250g per day post weaning, based on a rate of 330g per day when they were with their dam on pasture. This means these lambs could catch the higher schedule and will be off the farm before any summer dry kicks in.
At shearing time, soon after weaning, the leftover lambs get divided into mobs by weight. “Small, slower growing ones – less than 25kg – will go to the back hill country to grow out; the medium lambs – 25 to 28kg – will go onto improved pasture and the bigger ones will go onto the 20 paddocks of crop. Those will be 28 to 30kg and over, depending on how many we need for the crops.”
From that point there’s a rolling cycle of weighing and drafting off stock once they reach about 42kg, and then moving the next ones onto the crop. The weighing is worked in with four-weekly drenching, and they send lambs on the truck every two to three weeks.
“Once I get into the swing of the season – how fast they’re growing and how much feed I’ve got, I can predict when the mobs will be ready and book space. If the hill country lambs are 28kg, say, then they’re 14kg from slaughter and if we can average 250g per day over 60 days with a combination of hill country and crop then they are ready for slaughter.”
Things don’t always go exactly to plan, Sam notes, but that’s the outline and he can adjust accordingly – depending on how much feed and how much time he’s got.
Prior to weaning, they often run a sample of the ewes through the drafter with their lambs. Sam can then get a reading on how the ewes are going “and what work I need to do to get them ready for mating.” That's another plan swinging into action!
To find out about the software Sam is using, click below...
