South East Local Land Services will be holding a seasonal update session near Yass on Friday commencing at 3pm through to 5pm. The session will be held on Bimbi and Kim Turner’s property, ‘Silverdale’, 200 Lachlan Valley Way, Bowning (2 kilometress from the Hume Highway). Please look for the red ‘Field Day’ signs.
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There will be Livestock health issues looked at and a pest animal update.
South East LLS staff involved in the day will be:
Alexandra Stephens, District Veterinarian; Matthew Lieschke, Senior Land Services Officer- livestock; Fiona Leech, Senior Land Services Officer- Mixed Farming Systems; and Chris Harris, Senior Biosecurity Officer.
No RSVP, just turn up. For more call Alex Stephens on 6226 1155 or alexandra.stephens@lls.nsw.gov.au.
I have been pushing this of late but this is the biggest issue we will face related to pastures over the next 4 months. The bigger the spring the lower the quality of the dead feed in the following summer. From measurements I have taken over the years the difference in digestibility between a dry spring eg 2013 and a big spring is 10%, a very significant figure which has a large impact on animal performance. We were happy last year in how well the stock performed over summer because the dry spring gave us a higher than usual digestibility. This year will not be the same. All classes of stock will start losing weight once the green has gone from the system. The paddock will look ok but stock will be slipping on the dead.
Fat scoring ewes at weaning will give you an idea of how much time you have before action will need to be taken. If the ewes are fat score 3.5 then there is half a score that can go but if they are 2.75 then you need to be ready for action, most likely in January.
I keep making the point that all seasons provide us with challenges they just keep changing and our thinking needs to move with the changes.
This information is after the event but I thought the issues needed to be cleared up. Breeding values in theory should be able to be compared between studs. For terminal rams that is a fair comment but I don’t think it is for merinos. I have seen data from a number of sources which indicates that the influence of pedigree data has a substantial impact on the numbers that will be displayed. Just missing the sire data can change the index value by 14 points eg 126 instead of 140. The groups are of the same genetic potential but not having the sire details downscales that group. If a stud collected sire and dam data that will improve the numbers (getting bigger). This is not a major issue when you are buying within a stud but if you are using the data to select between studs then these impacts will influence your result. It is my view that the best data to select a bloodline is the combined wether trial data (the latest results will be out before Christmas). Once you have decided on the bloodline then the breeding values can help with your stud selection. It would be good in the future if this noise with the data was corrected.