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Scans key to better breeding TUATAPERE: Mount Linton's main income is from its sheep with lamb being the biggest earner. In 1990 the station branched out into texels and today has 26,000 texel-romney cross animals. Mount Linton's sheep genetics manager, Chris Johns, said the main breeding objective was to maximise returns to clients through increased meat and growth without compromising fertility and survival. "Maintaining our commercial focus is the key. We are collecting data from birth to 18 months and following that information through," Mr Johns said. "Our flock is improving and our ram sires are continually outperforming their fathers," he said. "We select and scan our best breeding stock and they are put through a CT scanner or CAT scanner. An image is taken and it is just like bandsawing a sheep in half. "It's as good as killing the animal but at the end you still have a live animal to breed from." The scan can pull out the top group of animals, allows the grain in meat to been seen in the hind leg, eye muscle, loin and shoulder as well as recognised the muscling of the hindquarter. "CT scanning gives us accurate information on yield data to select our mating rams," he said. Alliance Group spokesman Murray Behrent said: "We compete for shelf space with products that are considerable cheaper to buy than lamb. "We produce 7 percent of the world production and because most of the world's lamb production is consumed internally, New Zealand and Australia make up 90 percent of the globally traded sheep meats."
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