Tom and Donna Lynch, Hyden
FOUR years ago Tom and Donna Lynch decided to get serious about their prime lamb enterprise.
Market demand was driving a change in the prime lamb industry and processors were providing producers with more specific criteria for the product and were prepared to pay a premium for meeting those specifications.
The Lynchs’ run a mixed farming enterprise growing cereal grain in conjunction with a
3000 head self-replacing Merino ewe flock.
They mate the older Merino ewes to Poll Dorset rams and have now increased their prime
lamb production to the point that they currently turn off about 1000 to 1500 lambs all year round.
Attending an EDGE network Lambplan field day held at the Jolma stud in 2003 was one of thecatalysts for Tom and Donna to look at their management practices and make changes.
“It was a very informative field day and it really made us consider what we were doing and how we could improve,” Donna said.
“Lambplan was one area that we decided to investigate further and how selecting rams based on their figures could increase the efficiency of our operation.
“We gained better knowledge about selection, indexes and rankings and subsequent discussions with John and Perry Jasper has given us more knowledge and figures are now an important part of our ram selection process.”
Tom and Donna buy up to eight rams a year from the Jolma stud and select their rams using mainly carcase figures, especially eye muscle area and depth, as well as looking at growth rates from birth to weaning.
“We haven’t forgotten the importance of structure and conformation, if the ram doesn’t appeal to us physically we won’t go near it no matter how good its figures are,” Donna said.
The improvement in their prime lamb production has been recognised by WAMMCO with Tom and Donna winning the prestigious Producer of the Month title twice.
Their second win came in September last year with a line of 251 Poll Dorset-Merino cross lambs that averaged 25.09 kg for a contract per head price of $88.97.
Nearly 96 percent of that draft were in WAMMCO’s premium classes of minimum 22kg, fat score 2 & 3.
The other winning entry, in October 2004, was a line of 185 lambs that weighed in at 23.7 kg and averaged $87.50 per head.

Ian Reynolds and Chris Syme, Greyhome Farming Co, Cunderdin
As breeders of prime lambs for the American lamb trade we found we needed to look for terminal sires that would make it as easy as possible to turn off drafts of lean lambs which fall into the guidelines set by the importing countries.
We needed to do so with or without the need to lot feed as seasonal conditions dictate.
We are confident of our ability to produce a quality product using our own management skills, and the benefit of the carcass scanning results from WAMMCO each time a consignment is forwarded for processing.
We need to be able to buy flock rams that will give us lambs with good long carcasses which have the potential to scan and yield well.
The type of rams that we have been able to source from Jolma stud over quite a few years now is giving us the results we want.