Shedding sheep growing in popularity

• Published date: 09 August 2023
• Publication title: West Coast Farming Times, The

It has been nearly a year since Owen Booth sold his herd of Boer goats in Milton, calling time on a nearly 20-year career improving their genetics

Now he is focusing on a flock of Wiltshire sheep and changed his stud name from Whitestone Boers to Whitestone Wiltshires.

He bought his first ewes from Tim Gow at Mangapiri Downs organic sheep farm in Western Southland in 2019.

Now, 39 mixed-aged ewes and 25 hoggets are set for the fourth lambing on the stud from September 5.

When the stud was launched, the goal was to "stabilise" 60 stud ewes on his 10ha farm, allowing for selection pressure, including keeping those on with less wool, Mr Booth said.

A selection criteria was to breed sheep which shed their wool before weaning.

At shedding time, Wiltshires looked "scruff y" but birds collected some of the wool to make their nests and the rest was free fertiliser, he said.

His breeding target was to reach 180% lambing.

The sheep breed was chosen because it allowed him "to take life a bit easier" because they shed their wool, did not require shearing and were worm resilient.

"They've never seen a drench gun."

The flock remained free from internal parasites even though they were challenged after the goats had left a high egg count on the paddocks.

"A Wiltshire's resilience is incredible."

During his career, he had worked on commercial sheep farms in the South, running strong wool breeds including Coopworth, Perendale and Romney.

If he was commercial farming today, he would run a Wiltshire breed because of the price of wool and the cost to produce it.

Wiltshires were once marketed to lifestyle-block owners because they did not require shearing, but now commercial farmers were running the breed.

"More so in the North Island but it's slowly moving south."

He knew of a North Canterbury commercial farm with a flock of 12,000 ewes.

Wiltshires were attractive to commercial farmers who could not foresee a return in the value of strong...