2015 NZ Ewe Hogget Competition

The annual NZ Ewe Hogget Competition identifies sheep farmers with top breeding, feeding and selection programmes. This year’s overall winners and owners of the NZ Supreme Champion hogget flock are Bevan & Wendy Hopcroft of Wendonside, northern Southland. Their participation over four years has resulted in worthwhile improvements to their flock performance.

Next year will see the 20^th NZ Ewe Hogget Competition which assesses sheepfarmers on the quality of their replacement ewe hoggets. Competition convenor Steve Rabbidge says that emphasis is put on production (50%), breed type (15%), breeding objectives (20%) and wool (15%).

“It is about breeding and feeding good animals to maximise their production. Judges also have to take into account the breeding objectives and selection criteria of the farmer, wool quality and the phenotype of the animals,” says Steve.

“It’s an extremely difficult competition to judge because of the variation throughout the country – merinos at Tekapo versus Coopworths in Southland versus Perendales in Wairoa. So it is important to get the right people as judges to take into account the class of country, environmental pressures, seasonal differences and so on. Normally they would see anywhere between 18 and 25 flocks in a season.”

For successful entrants there may be local and regional as well as national selections, and as well as the supreme winner there are awards for the top producer in each breed.

The 2015 supreme winners, Bevan and Wendy Hopcropft, farm 280ha of flat to rolling land at Wendonside, northern Southland. Most of the property is in pasture except for 27ha of swedes and a small forestry block. On this they run 2400 CoopworthXTexel ewes, 640 hoggets and 20 rams, and also graze 300 dairy cows for 10 weeks over winter.

Bevan’s father had been very impressed with Texels when they first became available in New Zealand, and when Bevan started on the farm 19 years ago he opted for the CoopworthXTexel cross. Over the years he has introduced a smattering of East Friesian genetics, which has given small but useful increases in milking ability, body length and scanning %.

The Hopcrofts entered the ewe hogget competition mainly because it offered an opportunity to benchmark their performance against other farmers in the region and to learn how they could do better.

“By getting involved with the awards you get the judges’ perspectives on what you are doing and tips on how to improve. We have entered four times, won the regional competition twice, just missed out last year and finally won the nationals this year,” says Bevan. “Over that time we have fed the ewes better and they have performed better and it has flowed through to the bottom line, and so as well as the satisfaction of entering and winning the competition we have had better profits.”

“You also meet like-minded people who have entered and they are enthusiastic about our industry, which is something you struggle to find these days and it’s good to mingle with positive people.”

Bevan also says that the competition has reinforced the basic 80/20 rule of productive success – 80% feeding 20% breeding – which has reinforced that they are on the right track with genetics that suit their environment. In their area both summers and winters can be dry but the hardiness of the CoopworthXTexel cross means that they can handle slight feed deficits.

“We focus on getting a concentrated lambing and then finishing them as quickly as possible so that we have enough feed for flushing the ewes prior to tupping. We generally kill half our lambs by mid to late January so then we can concentrate on ewe condition,” says Bevan.

“Ewes start lambing around 8^th of September for three weeks and then the hoggets start by 25th September. 20 days after that everything is done and dusted, the second cycle ewes finish and the hoggets finish.”

Hogget selection starts at lambing, which makes for an even busier time. Bevan chooses only ewe lambs born as twins and reared as twins. If one of twin lambs dies the ewe and its remaining lamb are taken out of the twin mob and put in with the singles.

“You can then tighten up those single bearing ewes to conserve feed, and that single lamb will more than likely kill straight off mum so I can draft them earlier than the twins, usually late November or early December. The ewe goes into the B mob to be mated to terminal sires for the rest of her life,” says Bevan.

“Selecting this way has slowly improved production over the years. Ewes generally scan over 180% and this year it was unusually high at 200%, probably the result of a good autumn and better fertiliser balance, with lambing at 165%. Hoggets scanned at 112% and lambed around 90%.”

“We aim for sheep that are medium framed and very good feed converters. They are not big but they are efficient. Because most of them are lambing as hoggets they are earning right from day one. It’s all about the bottom line, if we want to compete with other land uses we’ve got to be competitive.”

A local breeder (Blackdales) supplies rams that are selected from the top 2% on the basis of fertility, growth rate and lean meat production.

While getting the right genetic mix for their class of country is very important, the key to producing award-winning hoggets is feeding them well on pasture all year round, says Bevan.

“That means you’ve got to know how to grow as much grass as possible and match feed supply to demand. To cover any deficit we grow winter crops of swedes for feeding ewes and dry hoggets for a short period of time,” he says.

“We winter some dairy cows here so we grow crops for them and also for mixed age ewes, and that is part of a target for re-grassing 10% of the farm each year to keep pasture production high.”

The farm is a little more than one man can handle alone, and Wendy often assists Bevan with day-to-day work, as do their children from time to time. Preparing for the competition each year has been time consuming and has occasionally disrupted precious family time. However, the benefits in terms of more information and better productivity have meant that Bevan and Wendy feel that the effort involved has been well worthwhile.

Steve Rabbidge believes that they deserve their success.

“This is the premier sheep award for the country and they have worked hard to show that sheep farming is still viable and profitable. Good farmers like them and previous winners deserve recognition not just for excellence in hogget rearing, but also because they have a great deal of knowledge that they are willing to share with other farmers,” he says.

“Sheep farmers are generally modest about their achievements and it’s sometimes hard to get them involved because they don’t like to be seen to be bragging. However, the goal of the competition is to identify excellence and how it is achieved, and to give other farmers the opportunity to share that information. Bevan and Wendy are part of that process and are doing the industry a great service.”