The "Cashmore Park" seedstock breeding flocks are run under strict commercial conditions in conjunction with a large commercial prime lamb flock. We believe this does three very important things:

Creates more accurate EBV's as the range between the best and worst animals is greater and
Removes animals lacking constitution which have no place in the commercial world of lamb production.
Gives us the opportunity to view our breeding program results on large numbers of commercial progeny and make adjustments as needed.

"Cashmore Park" is situated at Cashmore 15km west of Portland in 830 mm rainfall zone and carries 2.8 dse per 100mm of rainfall.

Prior to 1992, Poll Dorset sires and Border Leicester x Merino & Coopworth ewes were, as on many commercial properties in the area, the mainstay of the "Cashmore Park" flock. An examination of the competing meat industries - pig and poultry production - indicated that faster genetic change would be achieved with an open breed policy, and the development of composite animals.The introduction of LAMBPLAN, the National Meat-sheep Performance Recording program, and the Terminal and Maternal Central Progeny Testing Programs, provided a means of correctly sourcing new genes that could improve each flocks' performance. Since 1992 AI has been used extensively to access new genes.

Three Seedstock flocks are currently run at "Cashmore Park" with the following breed mixes:

Composite Terminals

Flock 235003.

Poll Dorset, White Suffolk and Texel genetics.

Composite Maternals

Flock 150039

Coopworth, Finn, East Friesian, Border Leicester, Sth African Meat Merino, Poll Dorset, White Suffolk, Texel and Corriedale genetics

Coopworths

Flock 150039

Australian, NZOSR and APEX (NZ) Coopworth genetics.

BREEDING AIMS:

Produce sheep to satisfy consumer meat eating experiences in the world food industry.
Increase $ / Ha returns for ram clients / partners by
Using World Best Practice LAMBPLAN genetic evaluation technology
Maximise genetic progress in economic traits as seen by improvement in specific index's
Breed structurally sound, easy care functional sheep to reduce lamb enterprise production costs.

CUSTOMERS COME FIRST at "CASHMORE PARK"

The value of involvement with R&D Programs run by MLA, LAMBPLAN, and various state Agriculture Departments is seen as an essential part of the "Cashmore Park" composite breeds "customer satisfaction" development program.

"Cashmore Park" has entered a Composite terminal sire in the Eating Quality research trial being conducted at Struan Research Centre. This trial is aimed at examining the genetic and management factors involved in production of "sought-after lamb" with a consistent eating quality.

Two Coopworth rams have been entered in the Maternal Central Progeny Test at the PVI Hamilton. DNA is being collected from their commercial progeny for later use as results come to hand from the Struan trial."Cashmore Park has also been active in its participation in the development and conduct of PIRD (producer initiated research and development) projects to investigate topics pertinent to our breeding aims and objectives. To date we have examined the use of new genetics and BLUP technology in our breeding programs, meat tenderness and the Carwell double muscle gene and presently are investigating the use of DXA scanning live animals to improve retail meat yield.As an addition to all the weights and measures taken on the seedstock flocks we have begun working with our commercial clients progeny testing ½ sib sires groups of commercial slaughter lambs. This data is then added to the Lambplan data base to improve accuracy of EBV's. Clients are reporting that it is an excellent form of benchmarking and we encourage anyone interested to give us a call.

Coopworth Ewes & Lambs