Welsh sheep breed makes its mark
A young sheep breeder is carrying on her family’s give-it-a-go philosophy by importing a breed that will eventually become a new entry in the stud flock book, writes Tim Cronshaw.
Only with prodding does Liz Hampton admit that her small flock of Kerry Hill sheep are cute. The domestic sheep breed originating from the hills of Wales has a distinctive colouring with black markings around its mouth, ears, and eyes. They would probably give the Valais Blacknose — dubbed the cutest sheep in the world — a good run for its money in the eye-candy stakes.
Ms Hampton concedes they are “pretty but practical” and prefers to focus on their hardiness, meaty frames and potential as a terminal sire. She accepts that some of them might end up in lifestyle block paddocks, but hopes they will have a place in commercial sheep farming once they earn trust. Encouraging for her is seeing the reaction of older breeders to Kerry Hills.
“A lot of the older fellas are quite traditional in their ways and they normally turn up their noses to these new breeds, but they’ve actually been quite interested in these because they still have a good carcasses on them and there is a purpose for them other than being cute.” New Zealand’s arguably newest sheep breed has just been brought into the country through imported embryos by the 23-year-old. Strictly speaking, old records show the breed first entering the country in 1937 and going to one flock before fading from the limelight until now.
“Until 2006 in the UK they were on the rare breeds list of sheep, so they were a dwindling breed, but they’ve made a comeback and they’re actually a good terminal sire and very meaty and shapely as well, quite round in their hindquarters and in their spring of ribs.” Ms Hampton got a close up view of them and the stud sheep industry during a visit to the UK cut short by Covid-19. A stint working on lambing beats indoors at two farms — including one property with 1500 ewes — was followed by a job with a sheep artificial insemination and embryo transfer company in Shrewsbury.
Six weeks into the job as a technician, she had to head home, but not before making arrangements to bring Kerry Hills genetics back home. “I came to the UK to see the stud stock that was over there. Being in an AI centre I had the top rams and ewes from all the different breeds come in and I was getting to see what they saw as their top quality stock.
This was very different to what New Zealand breeders see.” Eye-opening for her was seeing a sire come to the centre after making £100,000 at an auction. Stud sheep seemed to be bred for show judging, unlike New Zealand, where rams are bred for commercial sheep that can lamb outside and survive on their own.
Some top stud rams might spend two months at an AI centre, and top ewes never give birth in their lifetime but might have 80 lambs through embryos taken from them and mule ewes delivering their progeny.
Mule ewes are a Bluefaced Leicester crossed with another breed such as a hardy mountain breed to produce market lambs.
She took a shine to the mountain sheep breeds and the Kerry Hills had already been on her radar. “I had seen them on Facebook before I went overseas but when I went overseas I had full intentions to track some down. I probably saw one commercial flock of Kerry Hills and one or two studs, and they’re not as stud commercially altered with compared with a lot of other breeds in the UK.
That’s what I quite liked about them.” Before the UK visit was cut short, the plan was to go around the shows and talk to breeders. She kept in touch with her boss at the AI centre, eventually convincing him to help out.
He agreed to bring embryos over in March during a work trip and help implant them in the family’s six-tooth perendale ewes a month later and another North Island farm soon after. While a bit disappointed with the take of 70 embryos into 50 ewes, she is elated with the resulting 10 ewe lambs and eight ram lambs from the August 25 births. Ms Hampton says their mixed bloodlines from four different rams and 10 different ewes means they can be mated as hoggets if she wants to and there are plans to bring more embryos over from another line.
She might cross some of them over Perendale rams, as the markings on their faces are dominant, and then mate those lambs back to Kerry Hills to breed up the purebred flock. The medium to large sheep are used to the hills, less susceptible to footrot and sunburn and should do well here, she says. She has already had inquiries from people to buy them after setting up a Facebook page with about 300 followers, but plans on building up the breeding flock first.
Ms Hampton is a shepherd on her family’s farm in Cave and co-owner in one of three Waterton studs with parents Chris and Annabelle. She has about 30 Suffolk stud ewes among the family’s 250 purebred Suffolk ewes and they also run 100 South Suffolk ewes and 150 purebred and graded-up Charollais ewes. Originally, they imported Charollais embryos into the country and to build up numbers quickly they have done some embryo work themselves and mated some Charollais to a Suffolk ram and bred them back so they can have more than 88% bloodlines so they cane be officially recognised as purebreds.
Ms Hampton’s Suffolk ewes are part of the family’s stud, but she retains ownership of them.
Their progeny go into the greater pot and she gets the money if she sells a ram. Any cull ewes or lambs cover her share of the grazing, maintenance and mating costs.
They are all on the same page that this commercial split is a fair arrangement for a young farmer who sees stud stock breeding as her future. “I appreciate good stock and especially working with the studs and on sale days it makes me appreciate them and feel like that’s what I want to be doing.
When you see them at their peak and top presentation and feeling proud of what you’ve been able to produce.” The trio were among a small syndicate to set a national record price for a Suffolk of £17,000 after bidding successfully for a ram hogget at the Canterbury A&P Association’s elite ram and ewe sale. Collie Hills 81-21 is keeping company with the Kerry Hills lambs in a lower paddock at the Hampton family’s farm in Cave.
The family moved there from a Mid Canterbury sheep and cropping farm 15 years ago. “We took the dairy farming money, paid our family out and came down here,” Mr Hampton says. “We’re passionate about sheep farming, but with the stud sheep operation we wanted to be farming sheep where stud rams were going to be required.
We could see there was going to be no place for sheep farming on the Canterbury Plains.” There has been a lot of learning going from flat country to hills, but they have their heads around the dryland farm now. Initially, the plan was to be less intensive and more extensive, but this has leaned towards a reasonably intensive operation because of their background.
There are no regrets and they do not miss the early morning and late night shifting of irrigators or the expensive power bills. Much of the stock water and fencing development had been carried out when they arrived and they have lifted it again to bring the farm to where it is today. Any “rubbishy” grasses have been replaced by better pastures and lucerne, red clover, fodder beet and kale.
That has helped them drive up the stocking rate another 400 to 500 stock units and bring in a bull beef unit for a 65% sheep and 35% cattle ratio. The 816ha farm on some river flats rising to rolling to steep hill country is joined by a leased 130ha block over the fence. About half the farm, rising from 165m above sea level to 550m, is cultivated.
Most of the good country is on the tops and the rest too steep for tractor access. An example of intensifying the farm is the bull beef finishing operation. Typically, 130 Friesian bulls are run on the summer-safe upper blocks.
Some are reared and the rest on contract.
They leave the property aged between 18 months and 2 years, after grazing on cocksfoot-based pasture and being wintered on fodder beet.
This is based on a cell scheme, a hybrid of techno-grazing. The animals are shifted every three or four days. On top of this is a beef herd of 140 Angus cows.
The steers from them go to Ashburton’s Five Star Beef feedlot and the heifers over the past eight years have been exported to China. This has ended and the Hamptons will now finish the heifers. Across the farm are 3200 ewes consisting of the commercial flock of 2700 Perendale ewes and just under 500 Suffolk, South Suffolk and Charollais ewes.
About half the Perendale ewes go to their own black-faced rams and the younger and better ewes go to a Perendale ram. In the past they have tried to finish these on the property, depending on the season, but are about to embark in a new direction to hold their first on-farm store lamb sale on January 17. Apart from their ewe lamb replacements, just about everything else — 2500 lambs — will go under the hammer.
Mr Hampton says they are a bit nervous about the lamb schedule falling faster than expected, but they are determined to give this a good go. “My argument is that selling stores, we have never been rewarded as meat companies pay a price for this much per kilogram and truck weight, which is a fair way to do it, but we have not been rewarded for our genetics, because people who get our lambs think they’re pretty good.” He says it might take a couple of years to build up the sale, which will hopefully yield this genetic reward.
It will also leave feed for the main flocks so the ewes will be in better condition next year with better scanning and lambing results. While finishing their lambs they found that more lambs were hanging around longer at the expense of their ewes with the risk that this would flow through to more singles. Their Perendale ewes have consistently lambed at 100%-135% “ewes to rams to lambs sold” over the past five years.
On their country it is a good result. Mr Hampton remains hopeful they can find at least another 5% in the lambing percentage from the mass lamb exit and maybe more from their two-tooths. Overall, that means several hundred extra lambs.
He says they have to keep trying new ventures to stay relevant in farming and get closer to markets. “We do make changes and we normally don’t jump into things too fast. We normally trial things and see how they will go.
This is quite a big leap but is working for other farmers and we will be able to look after our other sheep better.”
By the same token, a helmsman sale was introduced in their ram sale to make it fair for all buyers.
Another side-gig for the enterprising family is woollen blankets made from the fleece of their Perendale flock. Mrs Hampton says the heavy blankets are proving a hit with buyers. They get to see the end result of wool they produce, make a premium on low wool prices and be rewarded from still taking pride in producing good wool traits when they select Perendale rams and wool classing at shearing, she says.
“People are finding they are preferring to sleep under wool again instead of synthetic duvets because it provides warmth without making you feel hot. Synthetics can get quite clammy and they say that wool is a weighted blanket and they’re finding that people with anxiety sleep better.” She says the idea arose after they had an impressive wool clip in February last year.
“We use pretty good perendale genetics so the wool is always good. Last year was an exceptionally good clip from the ewe lambs. We sent it up to Yaldhurst Wools and when they saw it they said “this is too good’ and we should do something with this.
It was white and perfect and a good micron of about 29 microns and quite uniform through the whole clip. Because they had the connection with the Hainsworth Mill in England, that’s where it went to be made into blankets.” The UK mill has supported the New Zealand wool industry since the 1890s.
Her brother-in-law Ross McGuckin and sister Polly run the Yaldhurst Wool business started by her father John Betts. Their family used to stay with the Hainsworths when they visited the UK. The wool is scoured at Washdyke, near Timaru, and then sent to the UK.
Mrs McGuckin sells the blankets through her business, Exquisite Wool Traders, and Ms Hampton sells them from the farm, too. They range from a throw to single, queen and king-sized blankets The king blankets weigh 6kg. At this stage, the run of 260 blankets and other items made from the 1500 lambs is a one-off, but they remain open-minded about a repeat venture.
It has been a joint family effort with their their son, William, who works at Yaldhurst Wool. Their nephew has done a lot of the website and marketing work and Ms Hampton helped make the video promotion. Mr and Ms Hampton say the satisfaction from the next generation becoming involved in the farming business cannot be under-valued.