David Vandenberghe and his wife Katherine of Wattle Dale Merinos, Scaddan, WA, have had a longer than anticipated journey to full pedigree DNA.
The program began 2011 when they first started electronic tagging and DNA testing all of their adult stud sheep and by 2014 they were beginning to achieve full pedigree.
But in 2015 the devastating Cascade fire burnt more than 2400 hectares of their sheep and cropping enterprise and took the lives of 720 stud ewes.
The Vandenberghes, who run a mixed enterprise, farm across five properties and were lucky their commercial Merino flock and home property was not directly impacted by the deadly fire.
“We lost about two thirds of our adult ewes in the fire,” Mr Vandenberghe said.
“From 1200 ewes we got reduced to about 400. Everything had ASBVs and we had full pedigree and then, bang.”
But they forged ahead and in the same year purchased a Poll Merino stud and in 2016 DNA testing was completed on the poll stud and the full pedigree path was well underway again.
In 2017 they changed all of their business to Sheep CRC and re-tested the sheep again. Results we only just received last week but have already been submitted into Sheep Genetics.
“By getting full pedigree it vastly improves your accuracy of your Australian Sheep Breeding Values (ASBVs) and it allows you to do an on-farm sire evaluation,” Mr Vandenberghe said.
“At the click of a button I can tell what rams are performing and how their progeny over the last few years have performed. It makes it a lot easier to know which ones to keep and which ones to cull.”
He said there are several advantages to achieving full pedigree DNA.
“It stops you from having something in your stud that is detrimental to your future flock,” he said.
“If you have a ram that is throwing ordinary lambs, you can remove him in one year, you’re not breeding from that for years and years before you notice it.”
Going further, Mr Vandenberghe said genomic testing the sires that you keep will in turn allow you to test for traits that you cannot see such as eating quality and intramuscular fat.
“One of the biggest advantages is the ability to build a ‘super performing’ animal by matching good genetics to good genetics, and that’s what we did for the first time last year.”
Mr Vandenberghe said exceptional young rams have hit the ground since taking the best ram in Australia on production figures, Hazeldean sire, 'Hugh'.
One of the first Merino stud producers to use this sire outside of Hazeldean, Hugh has been matched with CentrePlus-cross ewes which, as Mr Vanderberghe puts it, “have produced a pretty powerful animal”.
“They are leaders in a lot of traits,” he said.
“Hugh’s claim to fame is a high wool cut, a low fibre diamtre and high fertility. What we have been able to do is match him to our group of ewes that have all of that in moderation, but they have a lot more earlier growth and fat.
“Therefore you are mixing a production wool animal with a very good body type animal.”
- Mr Vandenberghe was a keynote speaker at last week’s MerinoLink conference held in Goulburn.
