It has been a really good couple of years at Three Springs based Hill Padua Polls.

2021 was a year where the combination of good weather and good prices helped for what it was an excellent season not only for our sheep but also cropping department. For this current year the production cost is higher, but the profit margin is still there. We are focused on a mix farming operation which in our understanding it is much more stable than only cropping. While in our area the number of sheep is reducing drastically, we have farmers like Adam who, been part of Hill Padua have started a separated sheep production and have been successful in the first 2 years. Great example of people walking into sheep production with great success. There is plenty of room for profit in mixed farming in the Midwest.

Excellent results from last year

Last year was our first time at Dowerin field days, where we had on display some of our Rams with all their ASBVs and also had the chance to meet new people and catch up with many clients. We are really looking forward to 2022 Dowerin field days.

The ram Sale was a success, all the 120 Rams offered were sold, for a top price of$7400 and an average of $1380. We are really happy to keep sending out our genetics. We really appreciate the trust of our clients in our bloodline, and we are committed and working hard to continue improving to provide the best product as possible. We love listening to our clients’ needs and opinions, as we believe that we need to work as a team.

Our September wool clip sold for 20% more than market price for the same micron wool, based on the high staple strength of 71 N/kt. This Clip was acquired by a top European Fashion designer for their winter collection.

We also have high demand for our 700 Surplus Ewe Lambs, in the end, the 16 months old ewes were sold to a repeated client Andrew Cummins in NSW for a price of $330.

Merino enterprise goals

Beginning of 2020 we had a few changes in farm staff, David Groves who was the Sheep manager for 12 years, stepped aside from his position, and Fred assumed as Stud and Sheep Manager.

Also, Covid happened, and our Classer and very important piece of our breeding program Ken Duxson, couldn’t travel from Victoria. That led to Fred and David to step up and fill Ken’s boots.

After this Staff changes, we decided to also set up new goals for reproduction and breeding.

Reproduction, Increase Lambing percentages: We knew the fertility potential and the mothering ability of our ewes. The high scanning %, the way they look after their lambs and the big udders to feed more than one lamb were clear signals that we needed to explore higher lambing %. We wanted to increase our marking % from 107% average in the last 10 years to 120%.

Improving score condition: We believe that after weaning and before mating is our opportunity to recover and prepare the ewes for a new joining.  So, after weaning we started supplementing our ewes with the goal of improving score condition, even when in spring there is plenty of grass, supplementing save a little bit the pastures and improves our ewes’ daily diets. Supplementation was based on trial feeding lupins and hay. We had Score condition 3.5 to 4 by December when joining started.

Flushing: We decided to invest on “flushing” our ewes for joining. Flushing consisted of trail feeding lupins for 14 days, we feed our ewes 500 to 600 grams of Lupins per ewe, every day, 7 days before joining and 7 days after we put the Rams in. Flushing is really important to increase ovulation rate and, hence, scanning rate. This is an investment of about 20 to 22 ton of lupins per year.

Campyvac on maidens: we were disappointed with the lambing % on our Maidens in 2020, and we were able to observe that ewes that scanned pregnant never delivered their lambs, so we thought it was a good idea to treat our young ewes for Campylobacter which is a bacterium that cause abortions. Maiden ewes improved from 89% lambing in 2020 to 110% in 2021, and 109% in 2022.

High volume of Rams: Our Joining always starts around 20^th of December, and we join for 6 weeks, which is over 2 reproductive cycles. Because of our summer conditions where we have 40c degrees, we understand that it is a hard work for our Sires to serve all the ewes, so we decided to increase to 2.5 – 3 Rams every 100 ewes.

The combination of these 4 steps have become very important to achieve high scanning %. We decided also to change our Scanning to the service of Bec Martins, which is recording every ewe at scanning for singles, twins, and triplets, which is giving us an extra tool at the moment of selecting our next breeding ewes. At this stage we have two years recorded in all our adult ewes and there is interesting to see how many ewes have repeated twin pregnancy for two years. Scanning results for 2021 was 157% with 96.5% pregnancy rate, and 2022 was 159% scanning with 96.3% pregnancy rate.

Reducing Paddock and Mob size: in 2021 we had about 20km of fencing done with the goal of splitting paddocks. It is known that every time we split a paddock in half the production of the paddock by rotation increases about 20%. All Paddocks bigger than 120 hectares were divided in half. We still have some paddocks of around 100 hectares that will be divided in the future. We believe that this is helping with pasture performance as well as sheep health. Reducing mob size have also been important to reduce miss mothering. We have around 20 mobs that goes from AI and Single Sire groups of 50 to our biggest mob of 280 ewes. We are working on reducing our mob size to 200 ewes maximum. The smaller the mob, the better result.

Checking and feeding through Lambing: We have taken the decision to assist and feed our ewes through lambing. This can be considered as a negative thing for miss mothering, but We have clear understanding that the more we interact with our ewes and the more we are around, the less problem it is. At this stage we can feed, check, and assist our ewes and lambs through lambing without any miss mothering.

Fox baiting: we realized that foxes were a problem for us, so we have been baiting for foxes around the property with very good results.

Finding the right number: We believe that sometimes less is more. So, we have been trying hard to find the right number of ewes for our system. We are slowly reducing our number of ewes but increasing our number of lambs.

Hill Padua Results: A combination of all this and high fertility bloodlines have been the reason for our improvement and results.

This isn’t only a result for us, we are also very proud of our clients achieving same or even better lambing results with our genetics. Cases like Harley Sears, Adam Thomas, Robbie Weir, Brian Baxter, Bec Martins… just to mention some, but honestly, we are all working together, and we are not afraid of helping our clients, so we can all improve together. Our genetics are nothing if we don’t have our clients that believe on what we are doing and the type of Merinos we have.

Breeding:

After Fred and David took over from Ken, we decided to set a new goal on our breeding program. Listening to our clients we understood that we needed to provide more wool cut, but without losing our Growth, Fat and Emd. So, the transition will be slow, but we are really working on it.

Ken set up an amazing line of ewes, they are excellent on their Growth, Fat and Emd measurements as well as very fertile, so, we couldn’t ask for a better starting point.

We thought that we needed to be honest with ourselves and set an approachable goal. We started on the low 5kg per ewe, we are now in two years in 5.5kg and our goal is 6kg of quality wool. At this stage we believe that 6kg will be good enough, and more than that will be too risky to lose the type of sheep we have and turn too much into just another traditional merino stud, and we do not want to go that way.

It is clear for us that we need to maintain the soft skin, plain body, and wrinkle free ewes that Ken left us and slowly add some density. Also, it is very important for us to maintain a long staple length to achieve 60 to 80mm of wool length every 6 months.

An aspect that we have been working very hard is on structure. This is the figure we are chasing the most, leg problems are not accepted, and we are working very hard on body depth. For this year Ram sale, we can say that we have a very correct sale team regarding structure.

Photo: Stud Reserves, 210274 left and 210273 right.

We are now carefully selecting Rams with higher wool density, better nourishment, and good structure. In this search for Rams with better wool, we came across a few interesting Sires.

Sire 180703, have been an excellent sire to improve our wool, having positive fleece weight and really long staple length as well as fertility.

Sire 191060, was the heaviest wool cut of his year’s drop and he is a good for growth and meat Ram as well.

Sire 190523, David spotted him as a Lamb at post weaning weight with just 7 months of age, and as we all like to do, he named him David, as it was “his” ram. He was the second heaviest wool cut of his year and had a staple length of 100mm in 6 months, 16.5 micron and a very bold crimp that you couldn’t believe he was so low micron. He was also excellent on his Growth, Fat and Emd measurements, as well as being very deep, plain body, good legs and really masculine with a  pure head. Making him a no brainer as a keeper and Sire for our stud. In 2019 joining we try to use him as a lamb, and he went out to a paddock with 40 ewes as a Single Sire, he came back very big and fat and impregnated 1 of the 40 ewes. In 2020 we did AI and Single Sire with him and have no problems. Last year he was killed by dogs, which was a very sad October day at Hill Padua. This sire will have some very nice Rams on the 2022 Sale Team, and he provided us with a Ram 210273, which is in our opinion one of the best Rams we have breed, excellent structure as well as top measurements, it is a perfect example of the type of Rams we are trying to breed.

In addition to our breeding program, we have decided to invest in full DNA and Genomic testing all our Nucleus animals, aiming for an accurate pedigree and an more accuracy in our ASBVs.

Our breeding goal is very clear, we wanted to provide to our clients a good option for today’s markets, with high fertility, fast growing animals, and high-quality wool.

We believe we have a very competitive product; in the last 2 years, helped with good market prices we have sold all our whether lambs for an average price of over $200, and we are always able to achieve good prices for our wool. We can say that at today’s market prices, 1.2 lambs per ewe and 5.5kg of wool is producing an income of $300 or more per ewe on farm. We understand that every ewe that doesn’t raise a lamb it is an expensive ewe to have on farm.

2022 Ram Sale

This year’s Ram sale will be Monday 19^th of September, will be on farm at 792 Strutton Road, Three Springs, Inspection 10am, sale 1pm.

We will have 124 Rams on offer this time, we will have the normal 120 on the sale team, with what we consider the best 20 to start with, but this year and after listening to some of our clients, we decided to have 4 of our Reserves or keepers on the sale as well, some of them will be on display at Dowerin and Newdegate.

This year’s Rams is the first drop where the mating was done by Fred and David, we didn’t use any external semen for this drop, but there will be plenty of Rams with East Loddon and Anderson Rams as a Grandsire or bloodline. Rams had a really good early growth and that gave them the chance to express themselves on their ASBVs.

We are proud to say that this is the first year where the average of our sale team is sitting Above the Australian average for Ycfw, with some animals reaching Top10% and Top20%. This is a clear indication of the direction we are heading. The Sale Team average is also sitting on the Top10% In Growth, Fat and Emd and maintaining a micron average of 18.5. Also, all rams have been DNA and Genomic tested for more accurate pedigree and data.

We are really looking forward to having you at the farm on Sale Day, as Anthony always says, Just come and have a look.

If you can’t make it, the sale will be interfaced in Auctionplus, and closer to the date will be announced delivery dates for the eastern states.

The Hill Padua Polls team wish everyone is having an awesome season.