Yarrawonga Poll Merinos

At Yarrawonga our main objective is to produce more dollars per head. We are commercially orientated running 75,000 DSE.

We now own and operate eight properties across New South Wales. This growth and expansion has been made possible through the profitability of our merino flock. Our focus is to generate increased farm profits. Yarrawonga sheep have the unique ability to increase fleece weights while decreasing micron, very few studs can do this. This has been proved through countless wether trials over the past thirty years.

Yarrawonga stud ewes average 8 kilos and better while averaging 18.5 micron. The Poll merino stud at Yarrawonga is now at the forefront of the poll industry with large numbers of Polls being produced now.

Provided below is information recently published in the Merino Bloodline Performance financial summary, containing analyzing data from a number of different results from wether trials and their respective medium accuracy bloodlines. This information displays that the Yarrawonga bloodline is continuing to be a leading bloodline within the industry.

Within the Merino Bloodline Performance financial summary Yarrawonga are in the top four percent of the industry for medium accuracy bloodlines, across three different environmental zones. These being Bookham Southern Tablelands, Naranderra in the Riverina and Woolbrook in the New England.

This displays that the Yarrawonga merino performs consistently in a majority of different environments.

Merino bloodlines: a comparison based on wether trial results 2004–2014

December 2014 Primefact 1381
S Hatcher, SI Mortimer, BCD Wilson, RP Graham and AJ Russell

The prime fact represents the performance of commonly used merino bloodlines, having been recently updated. The 2014 analysis includes a comparison of 22 wether trials and one ewe productivity trial conducted in NSW (17), Victoria (4), WA (1) and Tasmania (1) between 2004 and 2014.

We have included a small summery of curtain areas of the report that we find will help in the deception of the information provided below.

Measures of financial performance

GrassGro™ outputs include profit per head ($/hd), per hectare ($/ha) and per dry sheep equivalent ($/DSE). Each of these outputs includes typical enterprise costs and an overhead cost per hectare calculated by the program for the environment in which the simulations were run. As the same stocking rate was used for each of the 71 GrassGro™ simulations the $/hd and $/ha outputs are essentially the same. The graph we displayed below is described as:

• Profit per dry sheep equivalent ($/DSE) which helps the reader to account for the impact that differences in liveweight will have on grazing pressure. The DSE rating calculated by GrassGro™ over the 53 years of simulations is based on the consumption of feed for a given liveweight and fleece production. Profit per DSE is calculated as follows:

$/hd
DSE RATING

The genetic differences

The relative performance of each of the teams of sheep in the different wether and ewe trials is a combination of the genetics of the sheep and the environment in which they were run. For any group of sheep, the performance we can see and measure (the phenotype) is a result of their genetics and the environment in which they have been raised. This is represented by the following equation:

Phenotype = Genetics + Environment

The Merino Bloodline Performance analysis removes the differences in environments between years in a trial and between trials. Bloodlines with multiple teams, both within and across trials, provide the linkage that allows variation between trials and across years within a trial to be accounted for, leaving only the genetic differences between bloodlines.