ALMOST 20 years ago Mallee graziers Peter and Jill Rundle made a big decision.
As they saw it, if they were going to stay on the land then high-maintenance Merinos had to be scratched from the menu.
"The issue of shearing was also in the back of my mind as we expected, as time went on, it would be harder to get good shed hands and shearers," said Peter, whose property, Yerunga, is near Lameroo.
Weary of the wool market's volatility and sick of shearing, crutching and treating sheep for flystrike, they looked outside the square for a solution.
This led them to Wiltipolls, which in the early 1990s was still a breed most people knew little about.
The Wiltipoll is a pure meat sheep that sheds its wool. There is no need to shear or mules.
In simple terms, it was developed by breeding-out the recessive horn characteristics of the Wiltshire Horn to get a Poll sheep.
Wiltipolls are wool-shedding sheep, which means nutrition is directed to production of meat rather than wool. Their thick skin means they are resistant to grass seeds and there is also no need for tail docking, crutching or mulesing, Mr Rundle said.
These were all characteristics the Rundles were keen to adopt to help reduce their farm workload.
They started with a small flock, which included Wiltshire Horn ewes, and have been building-up their numbers since about 1990.
"There's only a few of the horned ewes left in the flock now," Peter said.
Breeding-up the flock meant retaining all the ewe lambs and only selling the wether drop each year.
"In the early days we were buying almost anything we could get our hands on to establish the flock," he said.
"In recent years we have been working on improving the flock and this will mean we might have some ewe lambs to sell soon."
Wiltipolls, unlike Merinos, are seasonal breeders, so they are mated in autumn for a spring lambing.
"If a ewe misses getting in lamb during autumn, we don't have the option of remating her again for another 12 months," Peter said.
This can have its drawbacks and as a result they are looking into the potential of mating some of the Wiltipoll ewes to Dorpers to reduce the effects of seasonal breeding in the progeny.
But one of the advantages of seasonal breeding (from a management perspective), is that Peter can leave the rams with the ewes throughout the year.
"I don't have to worry about running rams in a separate paddock for a big part of the year," he said.
The heaviest of the lambs are sold straight-off the ewe (at between 18 and 20 kilograms carcase weight), while the rest of the lamb drop is grown-out and sold gradually through to March.
Much of the lamb marketing is through their Southern Australian Livestock agent Paul Keynes, who finds buyers prepared to take the lambs straight from the paddock.
"There's still some buyer-uncertainty about the breed in the saleyards, so selling them this way I know we are not being discounted unfairly," Peter said.
"Wiltipoll meat is excellent eating - it's sweet and doesn't have too much fat, but some buyers can discount them in the saleyards if they are shedding."
* Extract from a full Livestock report in Stock Journal, September 10 issue.
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