Sheep find their place in Narrikup

While the Pugh's focus has more commonly been on cattle in the past, they saw the opportunity to expand their sheep enterprise in 2015, before sheep prices increased, and they are now running about 6400 Merino ewes. Prime lamb production is at the forefront of their sheep operation and they use predominantly White Suffolk rams over their ewes.

The White Suffolk has become their preferred prime lamb sire because the breed is similar to what the Pugh's ethos is with their cattle breeding.

"We like the dual purpose ability of the White Suffolk," John Pugh said.

"Fertility while producing excellent commercial attributes is what we look for in the composite breeding of our cattle and we think the White Suffolk breed is the sheep equivalent of that.

"We like to think of the White Suffolk as the Gelbvieh of the sheep industry with very strong maternal and carcase traits."

The Pughs run a small nucleus flock of 120 purebred White Suffolk ewes from which they bred their own rams.

The sires used in the nucleus flock are sourced locally from the Ridgetop White Suffolk stud, Mt Barker and the Rhos Gwyn White Suffolk stud, Mt Barker.

Continuing along the composite breeding focus they utilise with their cattle, they have also in the past incorporated White Dorper (from the Royston White Dorper stud, Napier) into the flock to breed a barer breech composite sheep.

Approximately 30 ewe hoggets are retained by the Pugh's as replacement stud females and a select group of young rams are kept and used over the commercial Merino flock.

Last year, they boosted commercial ewes numbers at the Cunningham family's Beeac Estate flock dispersal at Kojonup where they secured 3200 Billandri-blood 2-4yo Merino ewes.

"We saw the opportunity to buy very good quality sheep at the right time," John said.

"While this year we have seen some unusually cold and wet weather which has been hard on the sheep (and the cattle) we are hoping that once the feed starts growing we will get a good spring and we can turn off our lambs quite quickly."

The running of sheep and cattle together is not preferred by most livestock producers but the Pughs believe they complement each other well.

"What is a poor cattle paddock still has feed for sheep," John said.

"We follow cattle grazing paddocks with sheep which utilises every bit of feed and cleans up the paddocks."

Worm control is another benefit of having both sheep and cattle and the Pughs put sheep onto the cattle paddocks after drenching to extend the effectiveness of the drench.

The cattle/sheep grazing rotation is particularly important for pasture manipulation at the Pugh's Narrikup property which is well established with Kikuyu and needs to be well managed.

"I did a lot of Kikuyu pasture development in the early years of farming here and subsequently when most other people have nothing on the ground in autumn we still have green feed year round." John said.

"While the nutritional value of Kikuyu isn't as good as other annuals it provides bulk for sheep and cattle to graze on and get good value out of while we are waiting for other pasture to grow."

If it's not properly grazed, Kikuyu can block out other pasture with better nutrition so the sheep are vital for grazing it down hard which lets the annuals through.

Given the relatively reliable growing season of the Narrikup area, the Pughs ensure they are heavily stocked to maximise on production and keep control of the Kikuyu.

"Because we stock heavily, we don't try and chase the fat lamb market so in general we sell lambs later for live shipping or sell them on to others to feed for heavier markets," John said.

"We are currently updating our feedlot and are looking at finishing our own lambs in the future."

Lambing occurs over a six-week period from mid-May through to the end of June and this year the Pughs pregnancy scanned the flock to determine single and twin carrying ewes as well as drys.

"It has been an extremely tough winter and this has taken its toll on lambing and the ewes," John said.

"However we are hopefully looking at a good growing season and the stock are starting to pick up."

The dry ewes identified at scanning were re-joined which was a move aimed at maximising production.

"We can handle later lambs down here," John said.

"Given the amount of rain we have had the season is well set up to grow a lot of feed."

These ewes were shorn in early August and are due to lamb at the end of August.

The main flock shearing has this year been brought forward due to fly concerns after the more than average rainfall and with continual green feed since January the sheep have grown a lot of wool.

For a self-replacing flock, the Pughs mate 2500 ewes back to Merino rams sourced from the Billandri Poll Merino stud, Kendenup.