Macquarie

The Merino Lifetime Productivity Project

Background

As one of the founding Merino Sire Evaluation sites the Macquarie Sire Evaluation trial aims to evaluate and promote current industry sires suited to the wheat/sheep zone of Central New South Wales. The trials are managed by the Macquarie Sire Evaluation Association and NSW DPI.

Trials have been run on various properties in the Macquarie region of NSW since 1989 and are currently run on the Trangie Agricultural Research Centre (TARC), where a Merino Lifetime Productivity project (MLP) site is located.

Field Days and information days are held regularly to promote the outcomes of the sire evaluation trials and as a transfer of information between sheep breeders, researchers and third-party providers.

Location

The Macquarie Sire Evaluation site is currently located at the Trangie Agricultural Research Centre (TARC), which is located 7 kilometres north west of Trangie in Central West NSW. The pasture is dominated by native perennial grasses and herbage, with introduced annual species and lucerne. The main soil types are red brown earths and grey cracking clays. TARC is located in a non-seasonal rainfall region.

The ewe base involved in the 2015 drop at the Trangie site are currently sourced from the NSW DPI commercial flock at TARC, based on Centre Plus and Roseville Park bloodlines. The ewe base joined for the 2017 and 2018 MLP drops are Centre Plus and Towalba ewes with contrasting skin and wrinkle traits.

Breeding Objective

The Breeding Objective is to breed a highly commercially viable flock of sheep suitable for the climatic and pastoral conditions of the Central West of NSW. Sheep should not require high management inputs but be highly productive (fleece weight) relative to a fine/medium wool type (18 to 20 micron adult fibre diameter) and have good carcase characteristics that make them suitable as 1st cross or prime lamb dams. In addition to soundness the production emphasis is equally on increasing fleece weight and increasing early growth while maintaining fibre diameter.