KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES
Rob Tipa reports on the merino flock on Matarae Station, near Middlemarch in Central Otago.
The Jones family from Matarae Station have a passion for producing top quality wool and meat, regardless of whether it comes from their consistent line of superfine merinos or well-bred, strong-woolled romney flocks.
The two breeds are run almost side by side on exposed, rocky hill country between Outram and Middlemarch, flourishing in different micro-climates on the family’s 5500 hectare property between the Rock and Pillar Range and the Strath Taieri Plain.
The back of the farm is flat, but catches a lot of winter snow, is totally exposed to the elements and ‘‘there is nowhere to hide,’’ says William Jones, the second generation of his family to run Matarae with his wife Emily and sons Archie, Digby and Hudson.
Ironically, romney ewes consistently lamb at 150 per cent (160 per cent this season) on this heavier, wetter developed country while the merinos thrive on drier, undeveloped north-facing parts of the farm that are liberally scattered with rocky outcrops and steep gullies.
Snow melts quickly on these warmer faces and there is plenty of shelter for stock out of the wind among the rocks and tussocks.
Today Matarae Station runs 6000 merino ewes and 3500 merino hoggets alongside 4050 romney ewes and 1800 romney and halfbred hoggets, plus cattle and store lambs as the season dictates.
The split flock of fine-woolled merinos and naturally fertile romneys has given William and Emily a good balance between wool and meat income and a measure of financial stability to budget in a notoriously volatile commodity market.
Emily is from a Southland farming family and worked as a research associate at the Invermay Agricultural Centre, where she was involved in a romney progeny testing programme. She is also a member of the Merino New Zealand science committee.
She has her hands full helping with the farm’s scientific programmes monitoring breeding values, stock movements via electronic identification, accounts and office administration on top of raising a young family.
William’s parents Ron and Juliet Jones still live on the farm and are both actively involved in its running, particularly in the shearing shed through August and September, where Juliet classes the whole clip.
The family has built strong friendships with key sheep breeders, wool classers and processors in New Zealand and overseas to develop the particular type of sheep they were looking for.
After initially taking over Matarae with a thousand ewes and a Rural Bank loan, Ron and Juliet switched from corriedales to merinos in the 1980s and established a stud in 1984 based on stud ewes from Bill Gibson’s Malvern Downs Stud near Tarras.
There were few merinos in the Strath Taieri district at that time, but the breed lambed well and thrived on the warmer rocky faces overlooking the Strath Taieri Plain. The Jones have used their merino stud stock to improve the evenness of their commercial flock.
Their vision was to supply Italian mills with quality superfine merino fibre they wanted for fashion garments at the top end of international markets.
‘‘We differ from a lot of studs because we set the studs up to produce our own top quality stock, whereas a lot of people have set up studs to sell rams,’’ Ron explains.
‘‘We’ve done exactly the same with our romneys. We set the stud up so the top progeny comes back into our flock. That’s how it works.’’
Ron, who grew up on a small farm neighbouring Matarae, recalls his father’s romneys topped the London wool sale several times when he was a lad.
He believes romneys are better suited to the higher altitude, wetter country than merinos, so the family now runs this breed on one of several blocks added to the original Matarae Station.
In a nationwide search for good romney rams years ago, Ron attended a Wool Expo in Dunedin and found himself sitting next to Holmes Warren, of the Turanganui Romney Stud in the Wairarapa, one of the country’s top ram breeders and multiple Golden Fleece winners.
Ron bought rams from Turanganui and also secured some of the stud’s old ewes, building the foundations of his family’s romney flock that went on to win a Golden Fleece Award itself.
Ron and Juliet say their friendships with top merino and romney breeders and with Italian wool processors confirmed that wool quality starts right back at their woolshed when they are preparing fleeces for sale.
‘‘If you produce quality, you’ll always have a buyer and that strategy has always paid off,’’ Ron says. ‘‘Even when prices are low, you’ll still get the best prices.’’
‘‘The quality is very even now,’’ Juliet adds. ‘‘It has taken a long time but we’ve certainly seen that in the last 10 years.’’
Matarae recently secured a fiveyear contract through Merino New Zealand to supply a spinner style of fine wool to the Italian mill Reda. The Italian mills are particular about the soundness of the wool, which they prefer to buy in small lots of five to 10 bales. They expect absolute consistency in every bale and don’t want a lot of variability in the length or style of wool.
‘‘If your lines meet their criteria they will pay you well so there is a real incentive to meet those conditions with a range of $5 a kilogram between the three grades,’’ Juliet says. ‘‘Last year was a very good growing season for us, which gave us a particularly good clip,’’ she says, a reflection of a combination of weather factors beyond their control.
While crossbred wool fetches about $3 a kilogram greasy, contracted merino wool is worth about $20/kg greasy and from $25 to $29 clean.
‘‘That’s the difference,’’ William says.
William and Emily say the Reda contract is ‘‘very farmer-friendly’’ and has given them and their bank the security of stable wool prices for five years to proceed with succession plans to progressively lease and purchase stock, plant and title to Matarae Station from Ron and Juliet.
Last season New Zealand fine woolgrowers produced 11 bales of the finest quality wool for the Reda mill and Matarae produced nine of those bales. This season New Zealand growers supplied 45 bales of the top grade wool and the Jones family produced 36 of those.
‘‘The improvement has come from the amount of wool we are cutting and the consistency in the type and style and that’s just from having the numbers, better lambing percentages and having more sheep to cull from so anything inferior can be culled,’’ William says.
Historically, some of New Zealand’s finer merino wool has come off ‘‘hungry fine’’ properties where sheep are not cutting a lot of wool, but William says Matarae is trying to buck that trend by cutting anywhere between 4.5kg to 5.5kg of fleece wool off a big-framed animal, not counting up to a kilogram of oddments.
What the family has learnt from their experience farming is that they are better off to stick with what they are good at rather than chasing industry trends.
William and Emily’s focus is to continue what William’s parents started with their fine wool merinos, taking stock performance to the next level with a strong focus on improving wool weights, lambing percentages, mothering ability, lamb survival, carcass traits and footrot breeding values.
‘‘I suppose what we’re trying to do with merinos is lift their lambing percentages. They still scan at 137 to 140 per cent and are lambing at 105 to 110 per cent,’’ he says.
Last season William experimented by putting a merino ram over his romney hoggets and has found the halfbred progeny sells well as a store lamb, particularly in Canterbury, if they are unable to finish them by February or March.
‘‘It has been a brilliant lambing season,’’ he says. ‘‘It’s the first year we’ve used a merino ram (over their hoggets). Lambing ease is exceptional and survivability has been good.’’
The halfbred experiment was so successful he will repeat the exercise next season putting a merino ram over romney hoggets and a romney ram over two-tooth merino ewes.
Matarae Station is one of eight Central Otago merino studs that will open their gates for a two-day field trip organised by Central Otago Stud Merino Breeders on March 15 and 16.
If you produce quality, you'll always have a buyer and that strategy has always paid off. Ron Jones