Saturday morning 14th. Our first stop on our way south only took us a couple of miles down the road to the Mt Guardian Perendale Stud which is owned and run by Tim Anderson and his wife Sue. (Virginia’s sister) Tim is vice president of the Perendale Sheep Society and one of the leading lights of the Society in terms of stock and activity. The Perendale ewe is a medium sized sheep able to survive in a relatively harsh environment with minimum attention, but still produce lambs in excess of 16 kg deadweight and a lambing percentage of 150% +. The breed was developed by Geoffrey Sylvester Peren, from his work on the Cheviot-Romney Cross.
Tim and Sue run around 922 Ha of land with some additional leased ground. We found on our journey around the farm that the land extends from some rolling pastures overlooking the sea, to some extremely steep hillside, which certainly had us hanging onto our seats! The farm holds around 5000 ewes with approx 1200 within the DNA recorded stud flock. Tim sells around 500 yearling rams each year, and was in Sue’s bad books because he had been offered a substantial sum of money for his best ram at the Show the previous day, and turned the offer down! The same client had paid 22,000 NZ $ for a ram a few years ago.
Tim and Sue manage a very tight ship with the help of Henry, a young lad gaining experience on the farm, and the son of the farm which would be our next stop. The flock was lambed extensively with the minimum of fuss, and I was amazed to only see one lame ewe during our visit. What was also unusual to a Welsh farmer, was the amount of land reclamation that went on in areas that would be seen as environmentally sensitive in Wales. The challenge in New Zealand is to maximise the return from every acre and every stock unit with the minimum of input.
Sheila could not get over the grapefruit and lemon trees growing in Sue’s garden.
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