Third Win For Tiari

A trifecta of later lambing, their first good season in three years with heavy summer rains, and ongoing genetic gains have combined with the bouyant lamb price to boost the returns of WAMMCO’s Producers of the Month for January 2012, the Taylor family of “Tiarri” Lake Grace.

When the Taylors won their last POM title in October 2010 their consignment of 216 SAMM lambs processed on October 27, recorded an average carcase weight of 23.24 kg and returned $104.93 per head including skin.

These lambs were also May drop and would have been feedlotted for delivery to WAMMCO from January 2011 onwards to capture higher prices. However the rapid early growth from a good legume pasture situation before a premature seasonal shutdown,resulted in the Taylor’s decision to deliver them straight out of the paddock in October, 2010.

Their latest winning consignment of 132 late May drop SAMM lambs was processed on January 31, 2012 with an average carcase weight of 25.54 kg and an average price of $144.67 per head with heavier individual lambs returning up to $170 per head.

“This was our first consignment of lambs to WAMMCO for the season and with a delivery balance of around 2,000 of our 3000 lambs still to go, the signs are very positive,” Ross said.

Just over half of the winning consignment (67 bodies or 50.8 percent) produced a WAMMCO Select bonus of $461.13. This equated to an extra $6.88 per head on the qualifying lambs of $3.49 per head (13.7 c/kg) over the 132 lambs submitted.

Ross, wife Pauline and daughter Kelly have found the proceeds from their Tiarri SAMM stud and commercial operations have outweighed the proceeds from cropping over the past few bad years.

This had resulted in a change to their overall enterprise from 60 percent cropping to the current 60 percent SAMM enterprise which is showing good returns from both meat and wool.

Ross said about 30 percent of the 4,000 breeding ewes on the property were now pure SAMM blood, with SAMM crosses of increasing purity accounting for the balance.

Heavy summer rains resulted in almost as much rain between September and December as they had for the winter and the extended green feed has positioned Tiarri well to paddock-finish most of their lamb crop without feedlotting. This contrasted with the situation in recent drought years when most of the flock was on agistment.

Tiarri studmistress, Kelly, added another mature SAMM sire from Rockdale last year and the family is pleased with the quality he is generating. The family sold about 140 SAMM rams last season to a strong local clientele, with a few buyers coming in from other areas of the State.

Previous placegetters in the WAMMCO State Prime Lamb Carcase Competition, the Taylors have also entered lambs for the current competition due to close at the end of February.