'Elite maternal' sheep open day on Dunderry farm

Tefrom composite a 'game changer'

For the first time in Ireland, high index New Zealand ‘maternal and meat’ genetics are available to Irish sheep farmers. These are from the top 20 per cent of the New Zealand maternal sheep breeding programme. Sheep breeder John Keely has branded these sheep as 'Elite Maternals' and is having an open day on Tuesday 29th August at his farm in Dunderry, C15 VC2H.

John is a sheep and beef farmer and while originally a mixed farm, his real concentration has been on sheep breeding with beef as a complementary enterprise. He has always been on the lookout for the best maternal genetics and has tried many different maternal breeds and crosses. Having seen the amazing performance of the New Zealand terminal sheep in Teagasc’s INZAC trial, John researched the New Zealand maternal sheep and just five years ago, imported his first Tefrom sheep.

Tefrom sheep are a composite sheep developed in New Zealand in the late 1980s. They were developed to improve the Romney sheep - the most widespread breed in New Zealand. To these Romneys the breeders introduced Texel genetics for meat yield and disease resistance and East Freisland genetics for milk and fertility. This has resulted in a very high performing dual-purpose sheep. New Zealand farmers must work in a low input and non-subsidised environment. With 80 per cent of the profit of a sheep enterprise coming from the ewe, sheep breeders have taken the sensible approach to profitability and put a huge effort into selecting for maternal traits.

John records his sheep on Sheep Improvement Ltd (SIL), New Zealand’s world class breeding programme. Every lamb born on the farm is weighed and tagged at birth and assessed for their speed to get up and suck. A ewes’ mothering ability, milk production, and such, is recorded at lambing. The lamb’s health, growth and functionality is recorded several more times during their life and only the best are kept for replacements.

SIL is seen as the world’s leading breeding programme and in the last 30 years, the Kiwis have halved the ewe flock (to 27 million) but the lamb meat production per ewe has doubled.

John has found Tefrom lambs to be lively and hardy and exceptionally quick to get up and suck. The ewes lamb quickly and easily, they are calm but very attentive to the lambs and are very good at keeping the lambs close. The lambs are well presented and easily born and have a great instinct to find the milk. The lambs are lively and healthy and grow well and for a maternal sheep they flesh very well. One big difference is that they don’t suffer the post-weaning check that we are used to in Irish sheep. In terms of disease, they have better worm and footrot resistance and in terms of management they are easier to drive and herd, and flow better through handling systems. The ewes are a moderate sized sheep with high productivity, efficiency and profitability.

"You will reduce your labour requirement throughout the year but particularly at lambing - so you can keep more sheep or free up your labour for other aspects of farming. In terms of what we are used to these sheep are a game changer," John explains. The open day is at 2pm.