Flock down, production up!

Speaking at the Red Meat Sector Conference in Nelson last week Burtt noted that ewe lambing performance had jumped from 100% to 123% and lamb weight had climbed 27% from 14.35kg/head in 1990 to 18kg/head in 2014-15.

Lamb sold in 1990-91 was 9.76kg/ewe; this has jumped 90% to 18.53kg/ewe last season.

At the same time, sheep numbers had dropped almost 50%, from 60 million to 30m.

Beef cattle numbers fell 20%, from about 44m to 40m; dairy cow numbers jumped 95% to nearly 7m.

Burtt told Rural News sheep industry productivity has done very well, “especially when one considers sheep and beef farming has been squeezed from ‘below’ (best land going to dairying, housing/lifestyle, viticulture, horticulture, etc) and from ‘above’ (conservation estate, forestry in hard country) therefore pushing it more into the hills.”

He attributes the productivity improvements to farmers adopting a wide range of “technologies” -- breeding animals, better pasture species and better management of livestock feed/feed conversion.

Also helping productivity is farmers’ focus on delivering lambs at the right times in response to customer (processing and exporting companies) price signals that reward good specification and desired weights.