Biggest Draft Wins POM For Gnowangerup Farmers
Ross and Bill O’Keeffe of Stirling Park, Gnowangerup have been regular “top scorers” with their consignments of lamb to WAMMCO over the past few years, but set new precedents for the cooperative’s Producer of the Month award for August with a large draft of 1,194 lambs that averaged 28 kg per head.
Bill O’Keeffe said the season at Gnowangerup had been “late, and poor early” but had improved since July, enabling them to turn off their winning July/August 05 lambs with minimal supplementary feeding of lupins in the paddock.
“The shorter season means that we will have less paddock feed left to go through the summer, but hopefully we will have a reasonable grain harvest,” Bill said.
The 1,194 head draft was slaughtered at Katanning on August 21, with more than 76 percent weighing above 26 kg, to return an average per carcase (including $5 for skin) of $101.77. Eighty seven percent of the big draft came in as fat scores 3 and 4.
Later consignments of around 1600 February/March drop sucker lambs delivered to Katanning over recent weeks also produced high returns.
The O’Keeffes maintain a self-replacing flock of around 7000 Merino ewes on “Stirling Park”, mating their cull ewes to Poll Dorset rams to produce two drops of prime lambs a year.
Bill said the family had followed this successful formula for several years, helped by ‘ace’ sheepman George Noakes.
RECORD WAMMCO BONUS OFFSETS TOUGH YEAR
Media Release 28/07/2022 Western Australia’s largest sheep and lamb processing cooperative will return a record $8.4 million in pool bonuses to its producer members at the end of August 2022. The 2021/22 ...
Read moreWAMMCO PIONEER DIES
Media Release 14/07/22 Des Griffiths, an early CEO of the WA Meat Marketing Cooperative, credited with helping WA lamb producers to reshape an influential global lamb processing and marketing cooperative, passed ...
Read moreNEW LIVESTOCK MANAGER FOR WAMMCO
Media Release (20-06-2022) Recently appointed Livestock Manager for WAMMCO, Mike Curnick is looking forward to capping his 37-year career in WA’s livestock sector in the lamb and ...
Read moreWAMMCO LEADER RETIRES
A distinguished career in the meat processing and livestock industry will end with the retirement of the WA Meat Marketing Cooperative’s Livestock Manager Peter Krupa on June 30. Mr ...
Read moreFEBRUARY WIN FOR TIMARU
A later than normal delivery of prime Merino/SAMM lambs straight off abundant stubbles from the bumper season, helped Tim Alexander and his family of Timaru Beverley to capture WAMMCO&...
Read more
