CONSISTENT rams breed consistent lambs at the Graham family’s operation at Adjungbilly.

They sent last year’s annual drop of lambs, close to 13,000, to be processed at JBS Brooklyn and were the fourth best lamb suppliers for the Great Southern brand in the country.  

David Graham said the aim was to hit the JBS grid, of 18 to 26kg carcass weight, with a 10c/kg discount for anything heavier, 95 per cent or more of the time. 

The lambs they sent from September to April, sired by Poll Dorset rams sourced from Valley Vista stud, Coolac, met specifications at 94.45 per cent. 

“Why do we hit the grid? Consistency of the rams we use and years of utilising the same genetics,” Mr Graham said. “We’ve always just bought Valley Vista Poll Dorsets and been happy with those, and those rams across the Riverina Merino ewes we run works for us. 

“From my perspective we’ve been consistently using Scott’s (of Valley Vista) rams since 1992, and they breed consistent to type and that assists in the marketing program and finishing ability, because they have excellent growth with what I consider the right amount of eye muscle and fat.”

Six weeks after weaning, the Grahams’ lambs are put into weight categories, enabling them forward market mobs to JBS as they reach the desired weight in paddock. 

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Mr Graham said the JBS program works for them as it minimises handling of the lambs before sale and provides crucial feedback. 

“Continual handling was impacting the lamb production system; all lambs want to do is be left alone and put on weight,” he said.

“Feedback is very important, because it helps you monitor how the sheep are performing. If you get a lot of three and four (fat) scores rather than two scores coming out of the paddock, you know you are travelling well.

“It also helps you target what you do. We don’t want to be sending down one scores, we want to be hitting the two to four score.”

It also offers them competitive returns in an already strong lamb market. 

“The lamb price is extraordinary, the supply and demand curve is such given seasonal conditions and peoples lamb marking percentages that supply is restricted so in the short term it is sustainable, but in the long term I think it will come back to 700-750c/kg,” Mr Graham said. 

“What is sustainable is the industry has done a lot of very good work in building export markets, so the heavier lamb you can produce out of the Valley Vista rams allows you another marketing opportunity for the heavy export market.”

Valley Vista rams are joined at 1 per cent plus one at the Grahams’ operation, meaning rams cover at least 100 ewes a year.

“With our split joining we are able to get 150-170 lambs per ram a year,” Mr Graham said. “We are also averaging three years out of the rams and they are maintaining good confirmation.

“We achieve about 95 per cent ewes scanned in lamb to ewes joined after an eight-week joining. Rams are functional that way, with plenty of productivity and producing lambs that hit the grid.” 

Helping assure those lambs hit the grid are the purchase decisions made by Mr Graham’s sons, Tim and Andrew, in conjunction with the Scott family of Valley Vista in the past five years, to select a moderate framed ram with good cover.

“I’ve always been a great believer if you can source genetics locally, it all works for the local economy and we are very lucky in this area we have got good ram producers and good bull producers,” David Graham said.