News & Events
Win Confirms SAMM Versatility PDF Print E-mail
Quintarra Farms, Esperance notched up their fifth annual WAMMCO Producer of the Month title early this year with a January consignment of SAMM lambs from a different environment.

Todd Quinlivan said previous SAMM winners had come off lucerne and other rations usually in May or June, from properties near Esperance.

The winning consignment of 101 lambs for January 2010 were from a mainly cropping property at Scaddan/Grasspatch. They were from a flock of 400 SAMM cross ewes and were dropped on the property in May/June 2009 and finished on barley stubbles.

“The lambs were a tribute to our Scaddan farm overseer Gavin Millard who was keen to test SAMMS in a mallee/cropping environment,” Todd said.

He said lambs in the consignment were second and third SAMM cross of mixed sex and they had thrived despite a patchy season. "We are holding our overall lamb numbers static, but we continue to improve productivity. We are finding there is still as much room for improvement with lambs as in any of our other farming enterprises.”

A check of WAMMCO’s archives shows that Todd and Mick Quinlivan’s Quintarra Farms has won a Producer of the Month title in every year except 2006, since the award started in September 2004.

The January 2010 award winners consisted of a draft of 101 lambs processed at Katanning on January 20. They averaged 22.28 kg and returned $95.11 (no skin value) with 77 percent graded as fat score 2 and 23 percent as fat score 3. Fifty bodies generated an extra $237.07 WAMMCO Select payment.  This was equivalent to $4.74 per qualifying lamb, or to $2.35 per head over the whole consignment.  48 lambs in the draft attracted a WAMMCO daily schedule price of $4.30 per kilo with 34 lambs returning more than $100 to a top of $129.
 
 

Published: Thursday, 25 February 2010 08:37