SHEEP FARM TEXEL - Findlay Stud

sheep farm sheep farm sheep farm texel texel

Owning a business and having lived in the city for most of our lives my wife and I decided to make a move to the country. The quiter life, fresh air and the clean non chlorinated water was a big plus for us and the fact it only took 10 minutes to travel to work in the centre of the city. We purchased a life style block of 5 acres with a house and leased most of it to a farmer for the first year.

We had been told the Texel was a new breed in the country, very docile and had just been released from quarantine so out of curiosity and wanting to get into the farming scene we decided to purchase a one year old ewe, She became a pet very quickly and after a while we decided to have her mated
at the appropriate time and the result was two very nice purebred lambs.

We took back the leased land and aquired another 25 acres next door
to make a small stud farm of 30 acres. I realized very early on the
only way to have good stock was to invest in top line ewes from
the start, but nobody was selling their best Texel ewes in
numbers so it was a case of breeding up to a pure Texel flock.

I purchased some Romney stud stock, joined the Southern
Texel Society and was lucky enough to became involved in a
progeny testing trial. This program envolved the top 14 sires
in NZ and these were made available for semen collection.

A farmer in Western Southland allocated 50 of his Coopworth ewes to each ram and these were all artificialy inseminated on his property.

The resulting offspring were then inspected in every detail for faults and good points.
While being processed at the processing plant I was involved with other members of the Texel
society in the measuring and documenting of every part of the carcasses for leanness and dressing out percentages.

1994 was the first year this was carried out and also in 1995 with another farmer making ewes available and another selection of rams from around the country.The top ram from the first trial was used as link sire for the second trial to judge against.
This gave me an insite into choosing the best rams available and to carry out an artificial inseminating program of my own each year since then . I now have a Texel ewe flock with the attributes that are required to make a top line flock.

I sell the best of my ram lambs on as stud stock and keep the best of the ewe lambs, about 50 each year to go through as hoggets. As rising two tooths I will do another cull and would normally
put out another 4-5 that have not performed through the winter after having

the best of food available.

I have learnt a lot in the last 5 years gaining knowledge on animal husbandry and doing all the right things that are required such as innoculating ewes against abortion, injecting with B12, seleimium and pre lambing inoculations. Lambs to have a scabby mouth vaxine which requires scratching the inside of the rear leg with the live vaxine, drenching with minerals etc and testing for worm burdon.

Although I must say Texels have a natural resistance to worms so drenching does not have to be carried out very often and as the lambs become pure breeds, daging is not required.
For pasture management I carry out thyroid and liver tests as well as

herbage and soil testing to make sure I apply the correct amounts and right kind of fertilizer.For spreeding small amounts of trace elements I purchased my own spreeder with a capacity of 240 kgs and this unit can be towed with a four-wheel farm bike.

Documenting every lamb is a must for birth date , weaning weight, Autumn weight, birth rank and the number of female and male lambs each ewe has every year.I intend to keep on with artificial inseminating each year as I feel it is a cheap investment to obtain the best genetics possible in this country. Cat scanning is now used to find the best muscled rams without going through the expensive process of Sir Referencing. For the lambs going to the processing plant we receive a premium payment over and above the schedual price and this helps for all the hard work we put in.

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