Fine tuning sheeps nutrition

Doug Avery has become a leader in the sheep industry with his innovative farming systems and sheep management ideas continuing to challenge and stimulate all who follow him.

Many dryland areas of NZ have struggled to remain profitable under traditional management systems but he has proven by analysing every part of his system and creating changes that use the environment to maximise the positives, sheep farming can again be profitable and sustainable.

Improved cultivars, high fertility and fast growth rates, vigorous hardy easy care mothers, and planned nutrition has enabled him to grow his asset by borrowing and paying for it by income growth.

His sheep operation has come from severe financial stress to the leadership position he is in today and is a story every sheep farmer should study.

Farmers that are considering an irrigation /dairy conversion change from a poorly profitable sheep unit should consider a Doug Avery approach as this may require less capital and be less risky than a change to farming other animals.

If farming was an Olympic event, Doug Avery would be a certainty for a gold medal. Avery is a farming phoenix who rose from the ashes of his drought-stricken Marlborough farm. He suffered six years of drought before hitting on the idea - and credit must also be given to Lincoln plant scientist Derrick Moot - of grazing his sheep on lucerne.

The result has been a surge in lamb growth, so much so that his lambs take only 11-12 weeks to reach 18.5kg market weights.  But he is not satisfied with that. He has brought in a South Australian nutritionist to  test the pastures and the sheep's livers to find what is lacking in their diet. Then he provides the minerals in the form of speciallyformulated licks. He found that because the Averys  puts a lot of lime on their pastures, the calcium this produces has thrown out the phosphorous balance in the ewes' rumen.

Avery is convinced successful sheep breeding starts with the rumen, the part of the stomach where plant matter is broken down and converted to energy. Because his lambs go onto lucerne at an early age, their rumen starts developing earlier. This gives an animal a better lifetime performance. It is one of the advantages legumes have over grasses.

The lambs wean at 36-40kg and then quickly grow to 52-55kg, the optimal weight for mating. They reach this weight so early Avery has the luxury of taking them sideways - his term for stopping their growth so they can put more effort into developing their fertility. His success is seen in his latest pregnancy scanning, which has his hoggets at 142 per cent. What he does next is also out of the ordinary. He scans the pregnant hoggets another three or four times during their pregnancy, to identify potential problems early and has a goal to have hoggets lambing unassisted at 120-130 per cent.

This year, his mixed age ewes scanned at 198 per cent, a phenomenal result, and lambs are being born on to waterlogged paddocks but in relatively mild temperatures. He says his ewes are superbly prepared for the birth of their lambs and the lambs are incredibly strong.  He is sold on the hardy highlander composite breed and raves about the ewes' “perky” teats, positioned ideally for thirsty new-born lambs.

Planting the highly fertile prairie grass and the mineral-rich herb plantain with lucerne is his latest interest. He has planted 62ha in this mix on a new farm and when it comes into full production, the income will pay the interest and principal of the loan he took out to buy the 419ha property.

“It's not about running more cows and more sheep on our farms to get ahead. It's about getting better production from what we've already got.”