TE WHANGAI NEWSLETTER SPRING 2019
How predictable some things are, here we are welcoming in another spring, it still takes a wet day to drive me inside and pull out a pen and in this amazing country we live in we always seem to get a wet day or two at this time of year.
There have always been two guides I have subconsciously used to set the timing of this communication, one is the sale of the hogget wool and the other is the flowering of the Magnolia out the office window. Now Wynne and I have moved, there is nothing but grass out my window so if Harry doesn't shear the hoggets when I used to, the newsletter might be late!
Using the micron of the hogget wool as a guide to how the season has been, the ram hoggets at 30.2 microns indicates the autumn at Te Whangai has been anything but easy!!
The heavy rain during lambing 2018 certainly hammered the lambing result but set up the spring well then just as in the previous year, if you were in the flight path of a summer thunderstorm grass growth for early summer was locked in, unfortunately so was a whole lot of fencing and digger work to tidy up the flash flood damage!! Harry had 76ml in 30 minutes on the 3rd of Dec (big mess) and 285ml for the whole of that month!
With minimal rain for the following 3 months pasture quality for sheep was the main issue but the silver lining to that cloud has been that the all the cows have wintered at Te Whangai, with out even hay etc, for the 1st time in the 45 years that I can recall!
BACK TO THE MARKETS
China continues to devour sheep meat like there's no tomorrow, we all know it is a risk but currently there are absolutely no stocks in the pipe line and while China was taking the lower value cuts they are now looking for legs and shoulders as well.
African Swine Fever is showing no signs of being beaten and by the end of the year some commentators are picking that the pig population there, could be down by 300-350 million pigs or roughly a quarter of all the worlds pigs!
As China pays a premium to take under processed carcasses,(assurance that they are getting what they want - not Roo!) they are also happy to take larger carcases, up to 30kg at times. This is effectively meaning there is still a good finishing margin in a 45kg lamb to be taken up to over 60kg liveweight, in turn meaning a 45kg lamb sold store can be worth considerably more than at slaughter.
Thank goodness for our dual purpose sheep because another year goes by and the fortunes for strong wool have not improved. The clean price of $4.84 for the ram hgt wool recently is only a reflection of the fineness of it but I urge caution to anyone trying to chase fine wool by cross breeding because there is always a cost somewhere, watch the feet, constitution, flystrike, fertility and dermatitis in the wool. I'm speaking from my own experience, having tried using a Merino 25 years ago.
Prices are only driven by supply and demand, drought in Australia is impacting supply of fine wool and Merino clothing is in demand so prices are high but be warned, the fine Merino price has come back by over $10 per kg on last year and I recently purchased what was supposed to be a fine merino tee shirt but unfortunately someone trying to cheapen their yarn down has incorporated coarser fibres hence the garment was prickly! The quickest way to turn consumers off wool again!
I recently heard Tim Brown, the founder of Allbirds shoes, state that 'sustainable doesn't sell, quality products do’.
Garth Carnaby who was once the head of WRONZ, (Wool Research) wrote a very interesting report last year, describing the history of strong wool use. Even I was surprised to learn that the modern carpet tufting technique effectively created a 'new use' for our quality strong wool, which had historically been used mostly in apparel. The nature of R&D is that not every project will be a winner, this development was funded by the NZ Wool Board and was a real winner.
The next big project was extracting the protein from wool via the Keratec process, however that never made the impact that was envisioned. Roll on 15 years and the fund the Wool Board left for R&D has come up with another 'deconstruction' method which WRONZ have high hopes for. Lets watch with interest and support when needed.
FACIAL ECZEMA poked it's ugly head up in very strange places this year which was a shock for some. We will still only have a limited number of rams for sale this year with a degree of FE tolerance so be sure to indicate if you want to select from these. We are sporidesmin testing this year at .4 which is a significant challenge but certainly not the gold standard of .6.
RAM PRICES have been held down against a tide of rising costs but this year we are reviewing them for the 2nd time in 14 years. While we run as mean and lean a ship as we can we must face the challenges of continuous improvements in recording technology, DNA usage where appropriate, the high costs of FE testing and a 14% rise in recording fees this year.
We will be maintaining the integrity of our 3 tier pricing system where every client gets some high index rams but no one can 'buy' their way ahead of other long standing clients.
We take pride in a no questions asked policy of replacing rams that die or fail prematurely and try to carry spare rams right through to mating time in case, for unforeseen reasons, anyone is suddenly short of sires.
The new pricing will be $1200 for the top 20% high index group, $1000 for the middle 60% 2nd tier and $800 for the 3rd tier.
As always, please return your form asap so we can give would be new clients a firm commitment on the availability of ram numbers.
Wishing you all the very best of luck for settled weather over lambing and look forward to catching up in the coming months.
Cheers
Hamish and Harry