The Wairere Romney flock comprises:

• 7,000 SIL recorded ewes and twinning hoggets
• 7,500 multiplier ewes and ewe hoggets
• 2,500 ewes which provide rams for Wairere King
• 1,030 Challenger ewes (facial eczema resilient, tested at 0.55 sporidesmin for the last two years, 10x two-tooth sires dosed at 0.6).
• 800 Dominator (composite terminal) ewes
• 1,700 SIL recorded composite ewes
  • Multiplier ⅜ Texel ⅜ Romney ⅛ Finn ⅛ East Fresian
  • Tufguy ½ Texel, ½ Romney

We select for constitution by mob stocking on second class hill country at a high stocking rate, averaging 750kgLW/ha wintered.

Wairere is a good testing ground, winter wet, summer dry, and in a class 1 wind zone.

Nationally, the Wairere reputation is built around “shifting ability” and “bouncing back after a hard time”.

Since 2003 only those hoggets which get in lamb have been eligible as replacements, despite the difficulty of doing that with Romneys in consecutive droughts.

This selects for early maturity and fertility.  We had to relent once, in 2009, keeping 140 (8%) not in lamb.

All ewe hoggets have been mated since 1966, and are all lambed unshepherded. 

Selection for easycare lambing and against bearings has been practiced for more than forty-five years.

Since 2001, up to 7,000 ram lambs each year have been measured for eye muscle area.

This measurement is integrated into our SIL index.

From 1994 to 2014 Wairere was involved with the Wairarapa Romney Improvement Group (WRIG) in an annual sire evaluation trial comparing progeny saleable meat yield.

Like you, we cull heavily on dags, and other basics like feet pasterns.

We are always thinking about how to reduce your workload. 

We have also started to select a line of “bare breech” Romney ewes to mate to our barest Romney sires, to produce offspring with barer points and less dagging.