Welcome to the Hurunui Prime SAMM Stud newsletter for 2007.

We were very pleased with the results of our on-farm sale, held at Braeburn on 15th January this year. The 2008 Prime SAMM sale will again be held at Braeburn on the second Monday in January 2008 – Monday 14th. It will again be held under the Helmsman format – we have found that very successful in the last two years.

The NZ Meat Merino Group was dissolved last year and the Hurunui Stud was dispersed between two of the former partners, John & Jo Booker, trading as Longfield Prime SAMM, Winton & Jean Dalley, trading as Braeburn Prime SAMM, with Terry & Loraine Reid, trading as Elgin Prime SAMM buying a share of the stock.

While we are now farming three individual studs, we are working co-operatively and will all be providing rams for the Combined On-Farm Ram Sale at Braeburn on 14 January 2008, with a similar number of rams as last year.

We have been in contact with Prime SAMM studs in New South Wales so we can continue to import new blood lines into our studs to make sure we are getting the best material we can. This year we imported semen from one of the top SAMM rams in Australia and that has been used in all three studs. We are very pleased with the outcome at this early stage. So for 2009, we will have again some rams sourced from top studs in Australia.

The Australians find it possible to import directly from the wide gene pool in South Africa, while our regulations prevent us from doing so. So to get top genes we need to be in contact with top Australian studs and we are relying heavily on their use of Lambplan to select their stock and to ensure that we get the best available. We are very pleased with the sire we introduced this year and with other contacts we made in NSW. We hope to exploit those contacts more in the future.

The NZ SAMM Breed Society will again have a breed promotion stand at the Canterbury A & P Show 14-16 November 2007, (Site L4 on the south wall of the Sheep pavilion) incorporating Braeburn, Elgin, and Longfield Studs along with two other breeders from South Canterbury and Otago.

See you at the Show! Remember our next sale 14th January 2008.

New Zealand Meat Merino Group – Hurunui Prime SAMM Stud