The Ashgrove Coopworth Advantage
High Performance Hill Country Coopworths
Ashgrove is a 478 hectare steep hill country farm located in Northland 26 km north of Dargaville. It is classified as hard hill country and demonstrates the stayability of Ashgrove Coopworths on hard country. The recorded and commercial Coopworth ewes are run together all year apart from mating and lambing. We have been on this farm for three years, and our three year average scanning result has been 187% ewes to ram, across the stud and commercial Coopworth ewes, from a mating weight of 62kg. All lambs are DNA sampled to assess and guarantee parentage, this means we don’t have to tag at birth so twins and singles are all lambed on very steep hard hill country with minimal shelter, a testing environment for survival.
Apart from some predation by pigs in previous years at lambing we will typically wean over 150%. We have farmed these genetics since 2004 in the North Hokianga. Through that period the flock regularly achieved survival to sale of 155%, and 29kg weaning weights off challenging country. These sheep are some of the highest performance sheep available on the market demonstrated by SIL ACE, yet hardy and will shift anywhere with gold status for FE tolerance.
All ram hoggets and replacement ewe hoggets are rigorously culled on faults such as feet, black spots and teeth before we even look at the animals indexes. There is a minimal drenching regime carried out, though Haemonchus (Barbers Pole) worms are something we do have to strategically drench for in our sub tropical environment.
The Ashgrove Coopworth Advantage
FE Gold Certification
Ashgrove Coopworths are part of an elite group of NZ sheep flocks that boast FE Gold certification. This guarantees ram clients that, Ashgrove rams have leading genetic tolerance against the debilitating disease called Facial Eczema. To be an FE Gold flock at least 10% of rams hoggets sold, including all potential stud sires, must be dosed with the toxin associated with facial eczema – sporodesmin at levels of 0.6mg/kg liveweight, to assess their tolerance. A high level of FE tolerance is a must for any farmer in the northern half of the North Island. It also goes a long way to explain the superior performance of Ashgrove Coopworths when put alongside other genetics. FE Gold Website.