Consistency of farming practices led to Pingaring producers, Peter, Isla, Craig and Rachael Jensen continuing their success in winning their fifth WAMMCO Producer of the Month title in September after winning their first in April 2005.
The Jensen's 5200 hectare property is evenly split 50:50 between cropping and livestock.
A promising start to the season with 80 millimetres of rain in the gauge from late March through to Easter failed to continue as conditions became dry with only 7mm for May and not a lot more in June impacting early growing crops and pastures.
Rain events in early August and mid-September brought the yearly total to 240mm and although the quality was very good, only average yields were harvested from their wheat, barley and lupin crops and one of their earliest finishes the farm has ever recorded.
The livestock component of their business consists of 3200 Merino ewes and 800 ewe hoggets grazing sub-clover and medic pastures.
The Merino ewes are split with 1700 mated to Tiarri Prime SAMM rams and 1500 mated to Nepowie Poll Merino rams.
There is significant history with both ram sources.
The Jensen family for 16 years ran the Uralla Prime SAMM stud, which was sold later to Ross Taylor and Kelly Gooch, Tiarri Prime SAMMs, Lake Grace in 2017.
The relationship with Nepowie goes back even further when Peter's father first started purchasing rams from Nepowie back in 1963.
Craig is in charge of buying the rams and focusses on growth and muscling with the Prime SAMMs, whereas he prefers well-structured, quality-woolled Poll Merino rams.
The ewes produce lambing percentages of between 100 to 110 per cent per ewes joined and over the past three seasons have averaged over 7.5 kilograms of greasy wool of 20.5 micron.
The Prime SAMMs are joined at the start of December for an April to mid-May lambing, whereas the pure Poll Merinos are joined a month later.
Like previous seasons, the Jensen's first draft of 626 Prime SAMM-Merino lambs were processed on September 1 and averaged 24.78kg, a fantastic result given the seasonal conditions and the age of the lambs.
The winning Producer of the Month consignment consisted of 107 lambs weighing 22.67kg with 98.13pc in the WAMMCO Sweet Spot.
On top of the crossbred lambs, more than 700 Merino wether lambs have already been processed this spring, averaging 21.4kg.
With many pasture paddocks already showing the impact of the early spring cutoff, the Jensens will use a portion of an extremely valuable 800 tonne oaten silage stack, produced in 2021, to supplement their flock this summer.
The silage will form the basis of feedlot diets especially for growing ewe lambs that are placed in the feedlot each autumn to ease the pressure on pasture paddocks and allow them to bulk up before having stock on them.
The Jensens also offer Lake Magenta minerals to all ewes post their January shearing to boost their mineral reserves for the stresses of delivering and rearing their lambs.
Since offering the minerals, the Jensens don't see any hypercalcaemia at lambing.
At this stage, Ms Jensen is yet to see any significant advantages by incorporating the incoming mandatory use of electronic tags into their business.
They already have an effective tagging system that identifies dry ewes at pregnancy scanning and she is keen to see if an exemption from using the eID tags could be introduced for growers sending their lambs direct from farm to processor.
