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Legendary Station Seeks More Production As the general manager of one of New Zealand’s largest, private sheep and beef farming operations, Ceri Lewis isn’t easy to spot. He doesn’t wear a collar and tie, and wasn’t behind his desk at Mount Linton when Country Wide came calling. When I asked for directions to Ceri’s office it never dawned on me it was the man himself. Dressed in wet weather leggings and Swandri with hands covered in afterbirth, he never announced his title but simply pointed out the route to the office. He then drove off on the motorbike towing a trailer with several spare lambs from the mornings lambing beat. Ceri has combined the general manager and station manager roles into one (but unfortunately not the salaries he says) and adopted a hands-on approach. It is a move which seems to stand him in good stead with the 26 staff employed by Mt Linton. When he arrived at the station about 14 months ago, it was in a state of flux and short on staff. He not only had to come to grips with his new job, but was forced to get out on the land with his team of dogs and help out with the mustering and stock work. In hindsight it was best thing that could have happened because it gave him an invaluable opportunity to get to know the station, its terrain, climate and people. The Southland station covers 11,034ha and carries 80,000su. I comprises 4,200ha of easy country at the bottom end of the station (called the Downs), 4,000ha of developed hill and the rest is over-sown tussock country. Mt Linton is described as a vertically integrated operation with its genetic, breeding, finishing and marketing operations. Adjoining the station but operated independently is the genetic powerhouse, Mount Linton Farm, which runs 2,100 Texel and Suffolk SIL recorded ewes, 800 ram and ewe hogget’s, plus 300 commercial ewes on 270ha. The genetics unit leases ram hogget’s to the station and sells Texel and Suffolk Texel-cross rams to external clients. In the SILACE results in May this yea the unit had the top Texel for meat in the country. Another 21 sires were in the top 200 meat rams across all breeds. Until recently Mt Linton Ltd had two finishing farms near Invercargill but has sold/selling them and bought a larger property closer to Mt Linton as part of an effort to consolidate. The company sold Retreat (220ha), have a contract on Waitoru (517ha) and have bought Motu station, 1215ha in the Lillburn Valley. It is 25 minutes from the station and about 85% fully developed. Possession date is April 1, 2006. The company also used to lease three finishing farms in Canterbury but the two dry-land blocks were dropped before Ceri took over. Only the irrigated farm, Glenellen, at Oxford has been retained and a centre pivot has recently been added. The sheer scale of Mt Linton is impressive, but Ceri won’t let that be an excuse for a lack of per hectare or per head performance. An aggressive development programme involving the growing of more winter feed, re-grassing, fertiliser and shelter is under way. ‘We want to take the place to the next level in order to do that we have to spend some dollars’. A major priority is to lift the lambing percentage from 121% and the tae target this year is to hit 140%. With the lambing just finished it looks on target and the extra 10,000 lambs will help pay for the development programme which is all being paid for out of income. The lambing increase is driven by improved genetics, feeding the animals well and focusing on lamb survival. The base flock is 30,000 Romney ewes and another 26,000 are Romney Texel-cross. Every ewe that went into the flock as a two-tooth this year has the Inverdale gene and within five years the entire hill flock will have the prolificacy gene. Ceri says the Inverdale gene has lifted fertility by 30 – 50% or an average 40% above sheep without it. They only used to scan 140 – 160% in the commercial flock. This year the commercial two-tooth’s scanned 192% with 14% triplets while the stud two-tooth’s scanned 243% with 43% triplets. It was a record scanning 193% in the ewes with 193% in the Romney and 182% in the Texel’s. The station is lambing hogget’s for the first time this year and mated 3,200 Texel Romney-cross ewe hogget’s with the Inverdale gene. They scanned 114%. Inverdale rams should not be mated to ewes with the gene. Only one copy of the Inverdale gene is required because if the ewe lamb progeny is homozygous (XX) it will be infertile. To avoid that, every lamb born on the Mt Linton stud farm is DNA tested by the Catapult Shepherd programme. Lambing hogget’s will help increase lamb numbers and boost cash flow. This year they were mated on the Downs, but in future will be mated and lambed at Motu. Benefits of the Inverdale gene is the ability to control the ewe’s fertility. Fertility can be lifted without the need for flushing and it can be reduced. If a farmer is concerned about the increase in the scanning rate, the gene suits anti-flushing (restricted feed intake and holding the live weight and condition over mating). Mt Linton found by restricting feed at mating time they can control fertility and the number of triplet lambs born to twins. The stud farm fully fed it ewes and scanned 226% while the station restricted its flock and scanned 180%. The triplet ratio in the station Inverdale two-tooth’s was 15%. Ceri says if feed is short the ewes can be shut down and pastures used to finish lambs. He says the gene can be managed but like anything a farmer needs to have the systems in place to deal with it. Feed needs to be available in the spring and later for heavily pregnant ewes
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