ABOUT

OUR MATERNAL COMPOSITES

Development of new breeds in response to industry needs has been something the Day family has always been involved in.  Our terminal clients desire to move from 1st X ewe system to a self-replacing prime lamb flock has seen us develop a maternal composite ram breeding flock.  While badged as maternal composites these sires also have the carcase attributes to produce a fast-growing high quality prime lamb.

Foundation Ewes

We started our Maternal Composite Flock in 2010 as some of our terminal clients were wanting to change from buying in replacement first cross ewes to breeding their own replacements.

Our foundation ewes were some of our most fertile White Suffolks. We used some cfa ewes which had a track record of fertility and longevity. We also gave our White Suffolk ewe lambs the opportunity to lamb at 12-14 months into our composite programme hence introducing some of our best and early sexual maturity White Suffolks into our composite flock.

Days Whiteface Maternal Composites

Introduced Genetics

Outside infusions initially introduced East Friesian, Border Leicester, Finn and Texel genetics. More recently there has been a small Coopworth infusion. These sheep have been at the top of their flocks on Lambplan. We also introduced Poll Merino into some of our sheep in response to clients that wanted to retain some wool focus. These were selected from a highly performance recorded flock with particular emphasis placed on fertility, fat and muscle.

Current Position

We are currently offering eighty high performance rams at our annual sale in October with more available privately.

These rams have been selected for early growth but with a moderate maturity pattern ensuring the ewe flock remains manageable and profitable. They have great fertility data (weaning rate), low worm egg counts and like our Poll Herefords and White Suffolk’s they have excellent carcase data.

OUTSTANDING RESULTS

FROM OUR CLIENTS

TW & EN Mackereth

Padthaway, SA

From 864 Days Whiteface sired Maternal Composite Ewe Lambs 2018 drop joined:

  • 36 scanned triplets
  • 526 scanned twins
  • 220 scanned singles
  • 160% overall scan percentage to ewe lambs joined