MANAGEMENT
Focus on timeless principles Selection towards facial eczema tolerance must be the number one success story of the New Zealand sheep industry, Peter Andrew writes.
After FE-tolerant and no drenching sheep, where could genetics takes us next?
A
few years back, in the Gisborne and Wairoa districts the sheep were pretty much an icon of our hinterland, condemned to the higher and cooler parts of the region. There, they consistently and effortlessly pumped out our district's best docking results. Meanwhile down in the lowland front country, the presence of facial eczema was a nightmare for many of the farmers of this district, let alone for the poor sheep. It was an annual curse that eroded not only the liver but also the farmers' attempt to build a great ewe flock.
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Then in the 1980s it all changed, a group of local stud sheep farmers in conjunction with their northern colleagues started the long process for selecting FE-tolerant sheep. The process ended with the creation of the FE Gold rams, a bullet-proof survivor to take our sheep flocks into the future. Now our front country farmer can comfortably dock (tail) more than 150% annually with no FE symptoms and no cost of control. In fact, this lowland zone also has great lamb survival, and they will be the first farmers in this district to push through towards the 180% benchmark in the next few years.
No longer will our lowland ewes suffer the embarrassment of half their face peeling off each autumn. A very ugly look just when you are trying to impress a ram who has plenty of choice. Isn’t it just amazing how impressive and powerful genetic selection can be? Quite a contrast to the textbooks from Lincoln that seemed preoccupied with the family tree of a mouse family. Everyone was a winner from the process with the annual benefit to the region now being worth many millions of dollars. This selection process towards FE tolerance must be the number one success story of the New
Country-Wide
October 2021
