High prices at first beltex ram lamb sale
Atop price of $15,000 was paid for a suffolk-beltex cross ram lamb at New Zealand’s first beltex sheep sale at Mt Somers last week.
The top price for a purebred beltex was $12,000.
Stud owner Blair Gallagher said the sale was ‘‘really satisfactory.’’ ‘‘There were upward of 300 people, and of the 66 sheep offered, only two were passed in.’’
The purebred ram lambs averaged $5242, while the suffolkbeltex lambs averaged $3861. Polldorset-beltex averaged $1550, and perendale-beltex averaged $1190. Demand was particularly strong from buyers seeking suffolk-beltex cross. Lambs sold from Northland to Invercargill with strong local buying, agents said.
Former Invermay head Jock Allison, Mt Somers farmer Blair Gallagher and farm adviser John Tavendale were behind Beltex New Zealand, which brought the breed to the country in 2017. It is the first new breed to land on New Zealand shores in just about a decade and is a double-muscled texel offshoot from Belgium.
‘‘The sheep breed has a seriously big backside and eye muscle,’’ Gallagher said.’’It is a new breed that offers specific attributes that will enhance the New Zealand sheep industry. It has extra killing-out percentage of live weight to deadweight and also the dressing-out percentage of meat to bone is higher than a lot of animals that are being grown in New Zealand.
‘‘The other major attribute of the beltex is the carcase conformation. ‘‘In the UK saleyards they pay a 15 per cent premium to get a beltex-cross carcase,’’ Gallagher said. ‘‘It was an unusual sale in the fact that we all thought there would be higher prices paid for the purebreds. That was my expectation. And yet the crossbreds, especially the suffolks, went through the roof.’’
The decision by the Government to allow direct import of sheep embryos from Europe without quarantine provided Beltex New Zealand the opportunity to bring in the breed ‘‘on behalf’’ of the New Zealand sheep industry. Gallagher contacted Allison 12 years ago expressing interest in the beltex breed. Allison pointed out that the east friesian breed, which he was responsible for importing, had cost $2 million by the time the animals were out of a five-year spell in quarantine. Changes in regulations meant embryos could, however, be brought from Europe and the United Kingdom without quarantine. ‘‘Since the government has decided based on risk assessment that it is safe to bring embryos straight in, it’s costly, but nothing like it used to be,’’ Gallagher said.
Beltex sheep are being developed in Belgium through selection. There is some argument as to how they made the selection or what the scientific basis was but some farmers selected for muscling in the bum and the eye muscle. In August 2016 Allison went to the UK and made arrangements to import some embryos. Of the 180 embryos brought in, there was a ‘‘very disappointing’’ take of 37 per centThe embryos were brought into the country in February 2017, put into the ewes in March 2017 and the lambs were born in August.