BREEDING EWES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 September 1939, Page 3

BREEDING EWES

DEMAND IN HAWKE'S BAY. In Hawke’s Bay many sheepfarmers on the smaller holdings have, for the past 15 years, concentrated on the production of fat lambs. On such farms all of the usual flock of Romney ewes have, until recently, been mated with Southdown rams. The resulting lambs fatten very quickly, and both ewe and wether lambs have been sold (states an exchange). None have been kept as breeding stock, for which purpose they are unsuitable. Each autumn the fat lamb farmer with, say, 1000 ewes, must cull about 200 of his flock, and to replace these and others which have died, he buys perhaps 250 in the saleyards. This slaughtering of ewe lambs has continued for so long that the price of breeding ewes has shown a steady increase in comparison with the price received for fat lambs. The high price of ewes has made the farmer cull too lightly, and at the present time there are many very bld sheep in Hawke’s Bay breeding flocks. As the fat lamb producers are not, as a rule, the most wealthy type of sheepfarmer they usually buy five or sixyear ewes, which will, in their first season, on a new property, give a high percentage of lambs'. Thus the price of five-year-old ewes has- for years been very high in comparison with the price of two-tooths. In Hawke’s Bay saleyards the five-year-old is worth two-thirds of the value of a two-tooth ewe. So keen has been the demand for old ewes that they have been bought, for breeding purposes, out of the fat sheep pens. A realisation that their breeding flocks were deteriorating has caused some Hawke’s Bay fat lamb farmers to use Romney rams with a limited number of their ewes. The Romney ewe lambs are then kept as future breeding stock'. It seems certain that this practice must increase until the supply of sound breeding ewes will once more meet the demand.