Brad and Kirsten Skraha, managers of Pine Ridge, Scotts Brook, are now two-time winners of WAMMCO's Producer of the Month award after winning the title again in November 2023.
The successful line was the fifth consignment of new-season lambs processed for the business which is now owned by Noel and Lisa Castle, in what proved to be an extremely challenging spring.
The winning consignment consisted of 150 suckers averaging 20.9 kilograms, achieving a WAMMCO Sweet Spot result of 96.7 per cent.
The property, originally cleared in the 1940s and owned by Mr Skraha's family, was sold to the Castle family in 2015.
The grazing dominant business consists of 1376 hectares (3400 acres) in the Boyup Brook shire, along with a further 162ha (400ac) in Narrogin, both managed by Brad and Kirsten Skraha alongside the Castle's other cattle properties in the Ferguson Valley and Serpentine.
The Boyup Brook property runs 3900 Merino ewes - 2100 self-replacing Merino ewes joined to mainly Beaufort Vale blood Merino sires and 1800 Merino ewes joined to Tipperary Poll Dorset rams.
The Tipperary rams, sourced from Randal Levett's Walkaway-based stud, appeal due to their excellent structure, stretch, muscularity and high growth rates, while Darren Chapman's Beaufort Vale Merino rams with their sound, heavy cutting and nourished white wools tick key selection parameters for the Pine Ridge flock.
A core nucleus of both bloodlines is now producing their sire teams, utilising Genstock's artificial insemination services and they have recently registered their own Mt Ferguson Poll Dorset stud.
A further commercial Merino ewe flock joined to Poll Dorset rams is run at the Narrogin property with the mid-May lambing ewes traditionally being the operation's first consignment of lambs sold each season in late September.
The farm is managed in such a way to maximise livestock performance.
Ewes are lupin flushed and teased in preparation for a mid-December joining.
Where once all ewes were simply "wet and dried," now all ewes are pregnancy scanned with the ewes split on foetal ageing groups (three and four-week joining periods), as well as into single and twin bearing groups.
This complexity has resulted in the property now having many smaller paddocks designed to maximise lamb survival, with a maximum of 140 twin bearing ewes in a paddock at lambing time.
These changes, along with selling any dry ewes, have resulted in marking percentages increasing 20pc across all age groups to average 110pc on joined numbers.
A clear focus has been on enhancing the property including restoring creek lines and enriching the soil.
All creek and salt areas have been fenced off and revegetated with more than 50,000 trees planted.
An ex-Blue Gum plantation recently acquired, has been brought back into pasture production with two tonnes per hectare of chicken manure applied annually, once the season breaks.
A strong lime application program has resulted in a 1.5 unit increase in soil pH and as a result, more clover dominated pastures with more available nutrients.
This has been achieved through one of Mr Castle's other companies, Premium Lime Products, using burnt and processed seashell.
The farm had a strong clover history, originally with Seaton Park and Dinninup cultivars, but now Balansa is sown into paddocks returning back into pasture from the cropping rotation.
Ryegrass (Dargo and various tetraploid varieties) are also sown for maximum stock performance.
The pastures are manipulated for capeweed in July and if conditions permit, are locked up in preparation for weaned lambs.
Weaning occurs when the youngest animal is seven to eight weeks of age.
All lambs are weighed through the Pratley 3-Way Autodraft with like weight lambs being placed into paddocks.
Mr Skraha said weighing the lambs at weaning saved time, as they knew where the heavier lambs were in readiness for future processing deliveries.
"The construction of our new covered yards, built two years ago has been a game changer, allowing us to work comfortably in any conditions," Mr Skraha said.
A small portion of the farm is cropped (240ha) with the resultant oats, barley, wheat and lupins used as sheep feed and the surplus sold through the CBH network.
High yields are expected from the cropping program with the cereals averaging 5-6t/ha and the lupins 3.5t/ha.
Part of their 2024 program will include an increase in lupins grown, again to benefit livestock.
Traditionally Merino ewes joined to the Poll Dorset rams were joined on a lupin stubble, however the business is now achieving a better result by supplementary feeding the ewes lupins as a pre-join flush and allowing the Merino wether lambs to grow out on the lupin stubbles.
A further 40ha is assigned to growing high quality ryegrass hay and silage.
This is used to supplement the cattle at the Ferguson Valley and Serpentine properties, along with feeding the young heifers from Ferguson Valley that are backgrounded and joined at Pine Ridge before returning to Ferguson Valley for calving.
While they already use electronic tags and recognise the benefits in tracking ewe performance in their nucleus mobs and Merino ewe lambs, there is a degree of reservation relating to the use of eTag's on new-season crossbred lambs sent direct for processing.
Like all growers, the Skrahas have significant concerns with a drying climate and the uncertainty surrounding the live export industry.
While more fortunate than many WA growers, Pine Ridge only received two-thirds of its average rainfall in 2023, justifying work and expense already done on a third of the Boyup Brook property to make it drought proof.
As for the uncertainty of the live export trade, Mr Skraha indicated that if access to the market was significantly altered, then a move towards faster growing Merino genetics would be considered.
Such a shift could be made relatively quickly due to the use of artificial insemination in their nucleus mob, however he is hesitant because they have been breeding the Merinos they have now for three generations.
More investment would need to be made into their feedlot system to be able to handle the extra Merino wether lambs and their joining numbers would have to reduce due to more animals being retained for longer.
