The Gardyne book of knowledge
Central Otago’s Robert Gardyne is the most consistent producer of the tenderest, tastiest lamb in the history of the Glammies, writes Rob Tipa.
It would be fair to describe New Zealand’s Lamb Producer of the Decade Robert Gardyne as a perfectionist, someone who is constantly looking for that elusive X factor that sets their stock apart as the tastiest and tenderest lamb in the country.
Back home on his family’s farm near Oturehua in the Ida valley, he says it is a huge honour to win the title, which he regards as the only true national competition for lamb.
He has entered meat quality competitions for more than 40 years, qualified as a finalist in the Glammies eight times and won the coveted grand champion title for the first time last year.
Following an independent assessment of yield, tenderness, succulence and colour the top 20 finalists of 166 entries this year were selected for the final judging by Beef + Lamb New Zealand ambassador chefs in the grand final at the Wanaka A&P Show on March 10. To mark the 10th anniversary of the awards, Beef + Lamb collated the results of the last decade to find the producer with the most consistently tender and tasty lamb.
One conspicuous detail in the fine print of the Glammies results this year was that four of the 16 farmer finalists used rams from Gardyne’s perendale, texel and texel cross studs. ’’The most pleasing thing about the Glammies is that each year we have had ram clients qualify as finalists right through, so it wasn’t just us.’’
He says it is very satisfying that some of his clients have been buying rams from him since he started breeding sheep and they are some of the Alliance Group’s top lamb producers.
In the past, some clients have won their particular breed sections and were within a point of winning the grand champion title overall.
Gardyne’s son Grant, who works the family’s 489ha Klifden Heights farm alongside his father, describes him as ‘‘a book of knowledge on sheep breeding’’. ’’What’s special is his ability to read an animal,’’ Grant says. ‘‘You either have stockmanship or you don’t. I think it’s fair to say he’s an elite stockman, but he’s always finetuning. He’s never finished.’’
Gardyne identifies feeding and breeding as key elements in their success. ’’Clover is the key to sheep farming,’’ he says. ‘‘Sheep would prefer 70 per cent clover in their diet if they have a choice. And the key to growing clover is pH levels, boron, molybdenum, potash and sulphur.’’
Average pastures often look like they have plenty of clover content, he says, but when you actually weigh it, the clover content only represents five to 10 per cent of the pasture mix. Not a lot of farmers bother with a herbage test, so they often have no idea if they have mineral deficiencies or if they need trace elements like boron or molybdenum.
The Gardynes regularly cut and bag samples of pasture, weigh the clover content and analyse trace elements to detect any mineral deficiencies in their pastures.
Gardyne says the advantage clover has over ryegrass is its uptake of trace elements, especially cobalt. Animals get nearly all of the cobalt they need from clover because it virtually dissolves in their stomach, he says, whereas with ryegrass they can’t extract all the cobalt during digestion before it passes through their gut. The Gardynes are well aware of the need to replace soluble elements like boron and potash, which freely leach into the soil profile under the little irrigation they use on pastures on their lower terraces.
‘‘For every tonne of dry matter removed in baleage - for every three bales you take off - you have to replace it with 20kg of potash,’’ Gardyne says..
Gardyne’s history in sheep breeding goes back nearly 50 years. He is a third generation sheep breeder who was brought up on the central Southland Plains near Winton. His father and grandfather had romney studs, but he chose perendales when he started breeding stud sheep in 1970.
When he sold an angus cattle stud, he started breeding suffolks and then put all his suffolk stud ewes to texel rams and half his perendale stud flock to texel rams when that breed’s genetics were released in New Zealand in 1990. Some of the Gardynes’ ram clients weren’t prepared to go to the extreme of a purebred texel, so Gardyne experimented with suffolk-texel and perendale-texel crosses. Gardyne believes part of his consistency in meat quality competitions is possibly related to selection of his maternal lines.
While ram selection has a big influence on meat quality because its genetics are spread across the flock, he believes farmers can help this process by selecting the right ewe lambs. Over the years of competition he has also observed big changes in market trends. ‘‘Meat on a good lamb can be 50 per cent more than the meat on a poor lamb, yet it costs the meat company the same to process both lambs,’’ he says. ‘‘So for the economics of the meat industry, we need good yielding lambs for the industry to be profitable.’’ After three generations of intensive farming on the Southland Plains, the Gardynes’ move to dryland farming in Central Otago has been a ‘‘bitter sweet’’ experience adjusting to the extremes of farming in wet and dry climates. A season out of the box has helped produce their best lambs yet with their first draft of lambs on January 5 - straight off their mothers on the tussock hill block killing out at 18.9kg at less than three months of age. Meanwhile the search for the most efficient animal continues. ‘‘The aim is to breed an animal that is more efficient. It may not be the longest or tallest, but it has the ability to hold its condition no matter what the conditions it is living in.’’