Rising two-year-old mob of mainly three-quarter bred Wiltshires. Photo / John Ford
Rising two-year-old mob of mainly three-quarter bred Wiltshires. Photo / John Ford
Highland Station, 15km south of Rotorua, is the epitome of a New Zealand hill country farm.
Shaped by seismic activity and with well-managed volcanic soils, the 1240-hectare property has been developed and farmed by the Ford family since 1931.
Over the years it has been used for dairyand beef cows, deer, grazing heifers, steers, bulls and sheep.
John and Catherine Ford have owned and managed the farm since 1995, when they bought out family members.
They simplified the operation to an intensive sheep, yearling bull and a few steers system.
The award recognised their appropriate farm management, minimising erosion, management of nutrient run-off, environmental sustainability, top-class stock and business performance.
They currently run 900 yearling dairy bulls, 130 summer Angus steers, 3300 ewes, 1600 hoggets, and 100 rams on the property.
The decline of the wool market
“By 2017/2018 it was clear from our figures that wool prices were dropping off sharply,” John said.
“We were paying $90,000 a year to shear, dag and crutch the sheep and selling the wool for $25,000 to $30,000 a year.
“That wasn’t sustainable.
“We were also working around shearing gang availability, and weaning lambs early to accommodate bringing the ewes in for shearing.”
John has been part of a farm discussion group since 1998 and there had been much talk about using self-shedding sheep, in particular Wiltshire, which were readily available in New Zealand at the time.
Highland Station owner, John Ford with mixed age, half-bred ewes behind him. Photo / John Ford
“We had been breeding for high fertility rates in our flock since 1995, first using East Friesian, and Finnish Landrace, and then Kelso genetics, which had raised our scanning rate to 200%.
“While this was advantageous for lamb numbers, those breeds are less hardy and we then went back to a modern more robust Romney with better facial eczema tolerance.”
Then in 2019, a decision was made to bring in purebred Wiltshire rams and breed until they had a purebred Wiltshire ewe flock, rather than replace ewes that already had desirable traits.
Five years in
In 2024, half the ewes are half-bred Wiltshire and the other half are three-quarter-bred Wiltshire.
Among the 2024 spring lambs, there will be seven-eighths bred Wiltshire lambs which should all shed.
“We are still shearing the half-bred ewes once a year and around half of the three-quarter bred require shearing, but this is much less than the Romneys being shorn twice a year,” Ford said.
In addition, the Wiltshires have very few dags and seem to have a degree of worm tolerance.
Compared to Romneys, Wiltshires have a similar wool micron measurement and like Romneys, their wool is too coarse to be suitable for clothing.
Ford said they were getting about $1.50 to $2.50 a kilo for their wool.
With meat, they are also similar, producing slightly better carcass weight per kilo of live weight than the Romney.
Andre Roma, left, and Sheldon Roma drenching 2024 hoggets. Photo / John Ford
“Surplus stock is sold at the end of March to lamb finishers who take them from 30kg to finish at 50kg live weight,” he said.
“I need to be at our winter numbers by early April.”
The rams are placed at one ram to 30 hoggets and one to 80 ewes, with the goal of spreading lambing so the ewes lamb during the last week of August and the hoggets at the end of September, minimising storm risks.
Considering hairy, not woolly sheep
Ford said that even in the past five years, talk among sheep farmers had turned towards using hair sheep breeds and moving away from wool completely.
“It’s worth noting that around the world there are hundreds of breeds of sheep, many of them hairy rather than woolly, and they also often have greater parasite resistance.”
Highland Station owners, Catherine and John Ford in their soon-to-be obsolete wool shed. Photo / John Ford
Ford wasn’t in a hurry to look at that option but said he was keeping an eye on the research being carried out and would review things in three to four years.
“Semen and embryos are being imported into New Zealand from Australian White sheep and Exlana sheep and early results are interesting.”
With half-bred Nudies, known as Streakers and three-quarter-bred Nudies called Brazilians, the effort is being put into finding the perfect no-wool sheep for New Zealand conditions and with traits required by our farmers such as facial eczema tolerance.
“Farming is applied science, not just putting animals in a paddock and feeding them.”
