WHAT'S BEEN HAPPENING?
Hi everyone and welcome to our winter 2020 news!
Firstly, we hope that all of you, your family and friends have come through COVID19 fit and well!
What a crazy and challenging first half of the year it has been! ... starting with yet another severe summer/autumn drought in most areas of New Zealand and a worldwide pandemic which stopped everything in it's tracks!
The current farming environment has probably been the toughest we've experienced in 30 years of farming in New Zealand and Australia!
It's in times like this, when we're extra grateful for our awesome genetics!
All our animals are looking well ... they have presence, they're structurally correct, healthy and happy, hence able to survive and even thrive in extreme conditions ... it's a real joy to farm animals like these!
Selecting for structural soundness is continuing to pay off ... we just don't have "tail-enders" or sickly animals on our farms anymore and lambing time is a breeze (all our ewes lamb on the hills, totally unshepherded) ... we have minimal deaths after lambing and our animal health bill is shrinking as we hardly need to drench our young sheep ... and oldies never get a drench anyway ...
We're absolutely thrilled to hear similar stories and feedback from you, our clients, where our genetics just hack it and bounce back, no matter what you throw at them ...
It just makes farming so much easier, more pleasurable and profitable!
Amidst all the uncertainty of changing weather patterns, turned upside down economy and direction of global markets, we continue to be here ... strong, together with our extended family, on the land, farming in our usual "tumeke" awesome way! ... and more so ... we have expanded!
You can now find us on the other side of the hills ... on 1st April 2020 - no joke - we took on another lease on the Saddle Road (Woodville side), a farm called Ballantrae, owned by AgResearch ... this new lease was to cover us, should we loose our existing lease after the Kimbolton block had sold in December 19. We're very pleased (and relieved!) to say that we've managed to renew the existing lease at Kimbolton for another 2 years ... phew!
So now we're the proud "care takers and guardians" of four lease blocks ...
As it turned out, it was very handy to have an extra 800 acres over the hill in a summer safe area this season! ... very lucky!
Ballantrae Farm will be run as a fully commercial operation, currently trading lambs and cattle. Our stud operation will stay in the mountains of Kimbolton-Rangiwahia!
Of course more land means more labour ... our awesome on farm team has now grown from just Simon, myself and Ian ... to having Luca, our youngest as full time shepherd, and Ben, our eldest as casual, working for us ... even though it's great to have a few younger models on farm, it doesn't come without it's challenges having your children working with/for you ... hehe ...
Simon overlooking "Ballantrae" ... wondering how the heck we're going to get everything done ...
Who's there? ... our Lamb Supreme 2T ewes being nosy ...
Where can you get a good feed around here? ... Lamb Supreme MA ewes looking for greener pastures ...
Suftex 2T ewes assembly ...
Coop, FE Coop & Coop Rom 2T ram team 2020!
WHERE TO FROM HERE?
Well ... we'll keep on doing what we're doing best!
we were able to use a very impressive 1/4 Beltex - 3/4 Suftex ram from Guy Martin and have put him over some of our Suftex ewes this season ... very excited to see his offspring a bit later in the year!
we secured 100 straws of semen of the top Beltex ram out of the UK ... planning to AI next year ... watch this space!
we even bought a High Country Merino ram (no, Simon hasn't lost the plot ... hehe) as an experiment to see how that progeny would perform and hack in our environment .. but we haven't been brave enough to use him yet ... we'll see
our MA and 2T Coopworth ewes docked just over 200% last year ... all on the hills, totally unshepherded ... and we're aiming for same or slightly higher results this year ... I guess, the upcoming pregnancy scanning will give us a bit of a hint on how we're tracking ... fingers crossed!
again we sold all our rams in all breeds and categories last year ... woohoo! ... and this year, with more lamb numbers coming through, we can offer increased numbers of rams for sale in all breeds! ... so please don't be shy and promote our genetics if the opportunity arises ... many thanks!
Getting ram orders in early over the last couple of years has proven to be a big plus for us and hopefully for you too ... just another thing one doesn't have to remember when things start to get really busy again in Spring ... it certainly made our planning ahead so much easier!
So if you already know what number of rams you need for this coming season or know your $$ budget, don't wait ... contact us and secure your order for 2020!
If you're not quite ready yet to order your next ram team ... don't worry ... we want to look after you, our longstanding, valued clients first, before opening up orders to the open market and new clients ...
Pascale will be in touch with you all in July to firm up ram orders ... before we sell out again!
We hope that you had a successful mating this year and the boys did an awesome job for you once again!
We wish you a kind and slightly wet Winter and look forward to connecting with you all soon again in person!
All our best wishes
Simon & Pascale
