Hurunui Prime SAMM Stud newsletter for November 2009.
The 2010 NZ Meat Merino Group Prime SAMM sale will be held on the second Monday in January - Monday 11th 2010. It will be earlier in the day than in the past to avoid clashing with another ram sale in the district. Rams will be on view from 10 am. Selling, under the Helmsman format, will start at 11 am.
The major change for this sale will be the venue. It will be held in the woolshed on John Booker's farm (Longfield) at 386 Dalmeny Rd, Hawarden. The main reason for this change is that Winton and Jean Dalley have sold their hill property and have moved to a smaller property near Waikari. As before the sale will include rams bred by three Hurunui Prime SAMM Breeders - Terry & Loraine Reid (Elgin), John & Jo Booker (Longfield) and Winton & Jean Dalley (Braeburn). There will be a similar number of rams for sale as last year (about 35).
The breed is showing several valuable attributes. Financial returns from supplying SAMM wool to Smart Wool contracts are very satisfactory. In addition there is strong demand for store lambs for both summer/autumn and winter/spring contracts. SAMM cross lambs are ideal for these contracts, finishing quickly on good feed, even after time on poorer feed, and produce heavy carcasses with ideal fat cover.
We have been looking at progress made towards our breeding objectives. All three studs aim to improve the wool while maintaining the growth rates and carcass composition and all have been making good progress. SIL data showed that we have been reducing the fibre diameter breeding value, while maintaining or improving growth rates. We are also reducing visible colour in the fleece. A few years ago we partly processed some wool from some of the 2th ewes. A display of this wool including some greasy wool for comparison will be at our display at the Canterbury A & P Show. While some colour was apparent in greasy wool, once it was scoured for processing the wool is very white (Y-Z= 0.1) - colour is no problem. We are also improving the footrot tolerance of the flocks using the DNA gene marker test developed at Lincoln University. In 2007, 18% of the foot scores of rams offered for sale included 1 or 2. By 2009, this had increased to 36%.
We are sourcing semen from Australia to allow us to continue genetic progress already we have been making. Some of the rams to be offered in 2010 resulted from semen imported last year from top NSW studs. We have identified a new source of genetic material from Western Australia which shows considerable promise and we hope to import some semen from there next year if the DNA footrot marker tests are satisfactory. Braeburn stud is continuing its policy of offering some Polled Merino x SAMM first cross rams for sale and these have been proving very popular.
The NZ SAMM Breed Society will again have a breed promotion stand at the A & P Show 11th -13th November 2009 (Site L4 on the south wall of the Sheep pavilion). This will include the wool display mentioned earlier. We look forward to seeing you there and at our sale in January.
See you at the Show! Remember our next sale - 11th January 2010 at Longfield. For details contact a member of NZ Meat Merino Group (see Contacts).