The future of our breeding program is based on large numbers of sheep farmed under commercial circumstances, using high selection pressure and state of the art recording techiques. Having proven sires with a good balance of traits means we can offer you a ram that will help you move your flock towards your chosen objectives.

Why would you trust your future to an animal that you don’t know the potential of?

Feeding 

Industry results shows rams that are pushed using hard feed do not last and potentially suffer from damaged internal organs.

Wairere rams are not fed concentrates at all. They may be a few kilos lighter as shearlings but wait until the following year, just ask any of our clients!

Health

Wairere UK is the largest accredited Maedi Visna and Scrapie monitored flock in the country and gives our clients piece of mind. Both MV and Scrapie are on the increase and can spell disaster if they get into your flock.

Worming

We want sheep that can handle a worm challenge and prosper. To improve the resistance of our sheep to worms we have a very strict worming policy and only worm adult sheep in exceptional circumstances. We actively select rams with good FEC gBV’s as well as dag and breech scoring all of our ewes and rams. Monitoring is done by taking regular fec samples. This is leading to lambs needing minimal worming in their lifetime, meaning less work and cost.

Molecular breeding values (mBV’s)

These are obtained by taking ear tissue samples. Currently the test can identify over 22 economically important traits. These include adult live weight, number of lambs born, weaning weight, dag score, fec score and many more. This is what the animal is genetically capable of.

Genomic Breeding Values (gBV’s)

This is the tool we use for ranking the animals for selection purposes. When the mBV results for an animal are blended with its NZ SIL eBV performance score (no other recording system currently can handle genomic inputs) it gives you a gBV. To be able to take advantage of this advance in technology, it requires sheep that have 100% New Zealand genetics, as all of the research has been done in New Zealand on Romneys by the New Zealand Beef and Lamb levy boardand their commercial partners. It is because of our large New Zealand genetic base that we are one of the few breeders outside of New Zealand to offer this to our clients. All shearling rams sold in the last three years (since 2014) have had a gBV score.