Rodney and Sara Morgan have been running a self-replacing Lampata blood Merino Flock from many years in conjunction with a sheep trading enterprise. As near neighbours they have witnessed the performance of the Lampata flock first hand so it was not a difficult decision to use their genetics.
“With our sheep trading enterprise we get to see the stark difference in performance compared with our Lampata blood Merinos,” Rodney said. “There is very little difference between their best and worst and they are very easy care. They’re natural foragers and converters and are also very good maternally. We always get a good lambing percentage and they milk and mother well,” Rodney added.
“The wool clip gives us excellent cash flow and with their excellent staple length we can shear more often and still reach good combing requirements. Their microns are also quite fine for sheep of their body size,” he said.
The Morgans mate 1500 ewes in their self-replacing Lampata blood flock and last year they averaged 115% marked with no scanning. They also mated their trading sheep flock to terminal sire (prime lamb) breeds.
“Last year the straight Lampata blood Merinos averaged more than the crossbreds, with the same managements, nutrition and marketed at the same time. Dropped in May, we sold the Lampata blood wether lambs in the first week of September at 45kg bodyweight and got $100/head. We got $22 for the skins six weeks off-shears,” Rodney said.
Early this year Rodney and Sara came to the conclusion they had a very valuable flock and decided to cash in on their value in a high demand and price period. They sold their entire Lampata blood breeders, with a top price of $217/head for the 2010 drop ewes while their 650 ewe lambs sold for $170/head on Auctions Plus. They sold 2500 sheep all up.
“We have kept our Lampata rams and now intend to build up our self-replacing flock again. With the quality of the Lampata genetics with nearly 50 years of measured performance behind them, we feel we won’t take too long to get our flock back to the same high quality and performance we had previously,” Rodney said.
