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The 2025 financial year is ending much better than it started. But the first half of the year still ranked in the misery index for those of us/you who had to sell most lambs and ewes before Christmas. Or were hammered by storms. Or endured the summer/autumn drought which impacted severely on parts of the North Island. At Wairere we seem to have been in a rain shadow since April 2023, the two years since averaging 655mm per year against a long term average of 1125mm. We have had to drop stocking rate to squeeze through.

Purebred Nudie two tooth ewesAre we farming on the same planet?? Pierre Syben visited the Stirling sheep market in Scotland on July 18. “Good cull ewes made up to $NZ460, poor ewes down to $220. Some of these ewes are 90kgLW, BelTex cross which probably kill out at...

Is there light at the end of the tunnel? Wairere two tooth sire rams January 2024When you’re at the bottom it’s hard to see the top. We are all enduring a squeeze of low product prices, spiralling costs and tripling interest rates. And a large area of the country is...

Streaker hoggets (1/2 Nudie) and Brazilian lambs (3/4 Nudie). Streaker ewe hoggets docked 89% in 20232023-24 is shaping up to be the worst year for sheep farmers in a long time. How do we dig out of this hole? If you treat pressure as your friend, this is the chance...

One of five mating groups of purebred and first cross Nudie Romney ewe hoggets, mid April. The first cross Nudies (Streakers) scanned 134%, 9% dry, the purebreds 104%, 20% dry.The global meat price index peaked in June 2022. The index is continuing to fall as China’s...

Purebred and first cross Nudie ewe hoggets being mated to purebred Nudie ram lambs, early MayWhat a change in just twelve months. From one of the best years in recent times, a drop in farm gate prices plus rampant inflation in all costs is putting huge pressure on...

Wairere ewes with purebred Nudie lambs at eight weeks oldSheep farmers are under siege. A siege caused by a combination of falling prices, fast rising costs, and a government determined to frame livestock farmers for a crime against the world climate…blame the...

Earl Twigley, manager for Humphrey Bayly on Okare Station, Wairoa, at Wairere, November 2021. Okare has been buying Wairere rams since 1987, except for a brief interval with Perendales twenty years ago. Earl is a quiet achiever, consistently lambing in the high 130s...

Bare Hair ewes in the UK, part of a flock of 3,000 in the UK. 85% of Wairere's embryos came from this flock, which is farmed outdoors all year round, on rented grazing, mostly with no fertiliser input. The season There have been extremes across the country. Half New...

Wairere Romney x "Multimeat Merino", just tailed at Wannon Pastoral, Australia. Second cut of 2,000 sold at weaning, 100 days old, 29kg $a140. Top cut went to own feedlot for February contract at $8.50/kg carcass weight.Take the best Romney genetics in New Zealand and...

Roger and Matthew Smith's magnificent ewe hoggets, scanned 141 %, story later.  Wairere Romneys put a distinctive stamp on their progeny around the world, in New Zealand, Australia, UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Chile. Example: Jim Logan in Scotland has saved £100,000...