March 2017

March has been a busy month both on and off the farm.

Allen attended the Leading Breeder Forum in Melbourne. This was hosted and run by Sheep Genetics Australia. It was both informative and motivational and also a good opportunity to learn from breeders of Terminal and Maternal rams.

We shore our mature ewes the following week. Test results are in, and as usual, every bale of Dohne fleece wool has a measured Fibre Diameter of 20. We have not ever had a bale average under 20.0 or over 20.9 microns.

Lucindale field Days were a great chance to meet our clientele from that region, and to promote the breed to new people. We took a ram and three shorn ewes with us to demonstrate the plain bodies and clean points of highly productive sheep.

Further progress is being made to rectify the damage caused by the windstorm in December last year. Electricity supply was reconnected in a permanent way, doing away with a temporarily repaired connection through the badly damaged workshop.

Recently, within our family, we have undertaken Training and Development in a wide variety of areas. We have received information or training on Russian Wheat Aphid, frost, Farm Safety, stubble management, Genetic gain, Genomics and cyber security.

The Australian Dohne Breeders Association held Roadshows in Western Australia and South Australia.  Allen was involved presenting some modules at each state meeting on behalf on National Council.

We nominated a Sire for the 2016 joining at the Merino Lifetime Productivity trial hosted by the Elders Balmoral Trial in Victoria. Their field day was on 24th of March, and Joy and Allen took a friend of theirs, a keen commercial sheepman along for the trip. Our ram was the only Dohne representative among 25 Sires.

The lambs were amongst the best for condition, with top 10% scores for both weaning and post weaning weights. They also had good scores for breech cover and wrinkle. Glen Holme 141077 was the only Sire of 25 with top 10% scores in both weight and breech score categories. This was the only group of lambs with trait leader scores in three out of four traits measured or observed to date.

It was a very pleasing observation, and we received a number of comments about the evenness of the pen of lambs.