| 49 RURAL PEOPLE » Peter and Caroline Foss Peter & Caroline Foss move to self-shedding Sheep owned by Peter and Caroline Foss. Ipurua South Devons 2022. Cattle owned by Peter and Caroline Foss. Karen Phelps www.breedsmart.co.nz Peter and Caroline Foss are moving their Romney sheep operation to self-shedding sheep in response to what he terms “ the abysmal state of the wool industry”. Peter admits it’s been a hard pill to swallow as he is still a big believer in wool. And as demand for self-shedding sheep continues to rise he’s delivering what the market requires with Ipurua stud, their 500-strong flock of pedigree SIL recorded Wiltshire sheep. The stud is based on their farm, located close to Aria and was established in 2016. A ram sale is held every November and this year will mark the fourth sale where the Fosses will offer around 80 full shedding Wilshire two tooth rams to the market via on farm auction. The Fosses have returned from a trip to the UK visiting a number of farms including Ballycoose Farm close to Carncastle in east Co. Antrim where they saw in the flesh for the first time the EasyCare and Exlana genetics they have been using in their flock: “There are two main shedding breeds available in the UK. Exlana (a shearer told us that ‘lana’ is Italian for wool so the name essentially means ‘ex-wool) and English EasyCare,” explains Peter. “We’ve got both those genetics in our flock now due to lamb in a month’s time. We have 30 pregnancies from an embryo transplant programme and 75 pregnancies from an AI programme. We hadn’t seen the stock in real life so we’d placed a lot of faith that these breeds were worth using. The aim of the trip was to visit the properties the genetics are coming from to ensure we are heading down the right track. We found a lot of good sheep over there and we were very happy with what we discovered so we’ll be continuing similar programmes into the future.” The Fosses farm 1400 commercial Romney and are in the process of grading up to a shedding sheep. They have an FE tolerance focus as well as breeding for worm resistance so minimal drenching is required. Peter was three months old when his parents bought the farm. He completed an Bachelor of Agriculture Science at Lincoln University and came straight home to the farm. Now in his 36th year of running the farm, he and Caroline took over ownership in 2001. The 530ha effective/550ha total farm is in two blocks a few minutes drive away from each other. The farm also runs 200 registered South Devon cows, established in the mid 70s by Peter’s parents. The progeny is raised to two years old and the farm winters 100 bull calves, 100 two-year-old bulls, 100 heifer calves and 100 two-year-old heifers. With this stud the focus is high performing hill country cows and they are farmed as a commercial herd on this country. Peter says quite a number of the stud sires will get to ten years old. “The aim is always to produce moderate well fleshed sound animals that can perform on hill country. Our cows are smaller but producing more meat. I see little need to grow a 600kg liveweight animal to give 300kgs when you can do the same 300kgs with a 500kg liveweight animal. The 500kg animal is a whole lot easier to winter than a larger animal,” says Peter. “We are moving towards polled genetics and three quarters of last year’s calves were polled.”
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDc2Mzg=