Porter Novelli Adelaide

Kevin Mitchell of Devenish in Victoria has been producing prime lambs for long enough to know that one single ingredient or input will not ensure the best outcome.

Kevin’s mix for producing good prime lambs follows the highly popular Australian mix of Border LeicesterxMerino ewes and Poll Dorset rams run on good pastures with well defined husbandry practices.

“If any of those key ingredients are not right you can’t expect to turn off profitable prime lambs,” Kevin says.

The fact that he obviously practises what he preaches is well demonstrated by his enterprise’s track record of regularly topping markets and having a regular group of eager buyers.

Kevin normally runs about 1,800 ewes on his 900 acre property, but currently, due to a shortage of irrigation water and rain and a resultant lack of good pasture, this has been reduced to 1,500.

“My biggest challenge over the last couple of years has been supplying the feed to get the maximum out of our sheep enterprise,” he said.

“Due to the dry conditions I have had to mothball our lucerne hay enterprise which in some years has produced up to 30,000 square bales of hay. Our focus is now almost entirely on the sheep. However if all goes well I hope to put some land back into irrigated wheat this year.

“Normally the rams go in at the end of March, with lambing starting towards the end of August. This year, in an effort to try to get more out of our depleted pastures, I mated 500 of our older ewes to drop their lambs in May.”

Kevin’s property has fairly small paddocks which he says helps his high (140%) overall lambing percentage even though he only runs one ram to 75 ewes at mating time.

“A few weeks before lambing we run the ewes through the yards and take out any that are obviously not in lamb and then put about 100 ewes in each specially-dedicated 20 acre paddock,” he said.

“I have been on Poll Dorsets for well over 18 years and, with the exception of a year or two when I tried White Suffolks, I have found them ideal for our conditions and the type of lamb the market seems to like.

“The other big advantage with Poll Dorsets is that their breed strength gives you a greater base to select sires from. If the other breeds were as popular in terms of numbers I might be tempted to look at them, but until that happens I will be staying with the Poll Dorsets.

“The Poll Dorset breed has made great genetic strides over the past 10 years, particularly in the area of weight gain and other genetic advantages. To maximise this we tend to buy at the top end of the sire market.

“There is no doubt the Poll Dorset rams are good workers and the modern progeny they produce have a strong appeal with prime lamb buyers,” he said.

‘We sell at least 95% of our lambs over the hooks and I am pleased to say we have built up a good reputation with Castricum at Dandenong and while I don’t think we always get the top price we generally get a premium on what we sell.

“Our target weight is between 26 and 28 kg, but with the tough climatic conditions over the past few years our more recent dress-out weight has been closer to 25 kgs.

“We replace about 400 ewes each year and I get most of these from a near neighbour,” Kevin said.

 

Kevin Mitchell with some of his Poll Dorset rams used as part of his prime lamb production program.