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Beltex living up to its billing BY: ANDREW SWALLOW
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s a third crop of commercial Beltex-cross lambs hit the ground this spring most farmers using the novel double-muscled breed say it’s delivering everything promised, and more in some cases. An occasional foot problem seems the only downside, and that will be bred out soon enough, they believe. “They’re a tough little lamb,” Brian Falconer, from Moa Flat in West Otago told Country-Wide. “We had one of our worst lambings last year with the weather completely against us and they did just as well as the [purebred] Coopworths.” His 4900 Coopworth ewes are a particularly tough, thick-skinned, smallerframe type out of the North Island, chosen to cope with the climate of a farm running
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from 580 metres to 780m above sea-level, he adds. Ewes aren’t shepherded at lambing either. “The whole farm is survival of the fittest.” Over the past three years he’s bought 18 Beltex or Beltex-cross rams and only one has let him down, which was last year due to scald which developed into footrot. It was one of two which needed treatment but the other came good in time for mating. The one that didn’t wasn’t culled: it wintered on swedes with the rest of the rams and Falconer expects to use it as part of the team this autumn. “I’m using them strictly as a terminal,” he points out. He says the best indicator of the Beltex’s performance he’s had was with two lines from his first draft of lambs last year. The Coopworth-Beltex cross lambs
averaged 1.5kg liveweight more than the Coopworths. “It’s a pity we’ve not been getting any yield data on them.” That is where the breed is reputed to excel, and nobody Country-Wide spoke to had been disappointed, including Alliance drafter Rob Maitland who runs a flock of 150 mostly Texel ewes besides his day job. “My lambs usually yield 56-57% but the first lot of Beltex-cross were 58.99%.” He’s also quite happy with growth rates having had all last year’s lambs, including those from his 50-odd hoggets, killed by the end of February. “I can’t fault that at all, and last year was a really tough year down here.” At Wyndham, Brent Robinson’s just completed his third lambing with Beltexcross lambs, having bought a couple of purebred rams each year for the past three
Country-Wide
October 2020