| When a young
Southdown ram sold for a world-record $16,000 last week, stud breeders
may have asked why Chris Medlicott wanted to let it go.
There are the prestige and accolades that come with
selling a top ram for a record price and the healthy exposure to
be gained for any stud.
Against that, a hogget ram such as Tasvic Downs 4-03
can inject valuable genetics into a flock and will undoubtedly bring
financial rewards for its new owners.
Medlicott’s reason for selling may come as a surprise.
It wasn’t for the money.
For the breed to make more gains, the elite rams have
to circulate, he says. “It does get my name out there and we are
all in business, but it’s not the money that drives me. You put
the money in the bank and carry on, but it’s seeing other people
appreciate the animal that gets me going.”
“I have maintained the right to breed 20 ewes with
that ram. I’m really passionate about the Southdown breed and, sure,
that ram made a world-record price, but I want to breed one better
than him. Whether I might purchase some of his genes from the guys
that bought him or use my own flock, I don’t know. I just think
it’s a good thing to keep moving forward.”
Medlicott says the goal of breeding the ultimate animal
will probably see him continue putting up elite rams for auction.
“Even though we have won this, I am nowhere near where
I want to be and probably never will be, but I believe you always
have to aim high. I have yet to breed the perfect sheep.”
Winton stud breeders Todd and Fleur Anderson combined
with Peter and Audrey Campbell, of Otautau, to buy the ram for the
record sum.
The Andersons had also paid the top price of $13,200
two years ago – for another Medlicott ram, Tasvic Downs 34-01.
The previous record of 3100 guineas was from a ram
sold in the 1960s by the now defunct Punchbowl stud.
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The breed originates in
Britain, in the hills of Sussex.
Medlicott hesitates before explaining how he keeps
on turning out top rams, unwilling to appear big-headed.
“That’s a big question. Everything comes back to the
average and to me you have to return to the whole flock. To breed
top commercial rams right through a whole flock I believe you have
to have a high calibre stud of ewes. There is more chance that the
elite ones will come along if your stud flock is right.”
“When these good ones go to someone elses flock, he
will breed to my average, and if my stud average is high, then there
is more chance of him becoming successful where he goes.”
It helps that Medlicott is a compulsive student of
pedigrees.
The top rams that have made money can be traced to
class animals four or five generations ago, he says.
Medlicott says he has always had an interest in the
Southdown breed, “near as soon as I was able to walk”.
He admits he had a good head start.
He says breeders gave him ewes because they recognised
his enthusiasm for the Southdown.
The first ram he sold that was of any consequence
was in Christchurch in the 1980s. Among the successful bidders for
Tasvic H-10-84, a grandson of one of the ewes given by his dad,
Bill, was Campbell. The ram was sold for $1200 at a time when the
Southdown was trying to regain ground.
“He bred extremely well for those guys who purchased
him and, to be honest, I thought the ram was worth a lot more. Some
of the breeders would have said that I lost ground because I should
have kept him. In 1993, there were 23 Southdown rams for sale in
Christchurch and 21 of them had Tasvic H-10 in the background. Even
though I sold him I have no regrets. You can have the flashiest
looking animal on your home farm, commercially or at stud level,
but it means nothing unless your clients get a lift in performance.”
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The reputation he gained
from the sale also made it worthwhile, he says.
All was not completely lost because Medlicott had
mated the ram as a hogget the year before.
This has been his usual policy and was backed by a
leading animal geneticist he had met at Massey University after
winning a prize to study there.
Ram hoggets are the key to making good progress in
a stud flock, he says.
The Tasvic 4-03 ram was the exception to the rule
and was sold before his first mating.
However Medlicott has bred intensively from the ram’s
sire and plans to start breeding next year from the same sire’s
ram hoggets.
Had he kept Tasvic 4-03 and carried on mating it without
introducing new sires, he believes that he would be out of business
in five years.
“It’s important to keep getting new blood and each
one should be an improvement on the last one because you have to
keep moving forward. On a stud farm, mating time is the most crucial
time of the year and you have to know your background of pedigrees
and understand what muscular structure you want to bring forward
in an animal. You have to have a photographic image in your mind
of what animal you want to achieve. That might sound way out, but
that’s how I achieve each animal.”
He credits his wife, Shelley, whom he met nine years
ago, as another reason for his success.
“She says you have to mix with positive people to
move forward, and since Shelley and I have been together we have
been moving forward. This has something to do with being positive
and you also have to set goals.”
Medlicott says he is chasing an easy care and easy-handling
Southdown with a fine head and fine shoulders.
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Commercial farmers recognise
the major importance of a fine head and shoulder for easy birthing,
he says.
“In its food intake relative to output, I think it
would be one of the most efficient animals around and it produces
fine wool and tender meat. The southdown has the quality to bounce
back from checks such as grotty weather during lambing or through
difficult periods of low pasture cover.”
Southdown was highly regarded among New Zealand sheep
farmers and was the No. 1 terminal sire during the 1950s and 1960s.
It’s small joints were sought after by British housewives
but it became too fat.
Medlicott says the breed has made many advances since
then and today is as lean as or leaner than any other terminal sire.
It’s probably the most efficient breed for delivering
the 17kg YX lamb that is prized by meat companies, he says.
“The meat industry wants deep loins and ribeye cuts
and plenty of length in the rack area, which the southdown has.
It also has a compact, well-muscled hindquarter which is not too
large and suits packaging needs.”
Medlicott constantly asks his local meat company for
the latest meat trends. And as a member of a producer group that
provides research for British supermarket chain Waitrose, he can
also keep abreast of overseas needs.
He has observed the Southdown’s strengths as a sire
for mating in the composite flock grazing commercially on his farm.
The advantage of using a Southdown terminal sire over
a composite breed is its tremendous background of purity, he says.
“The composite has a lot of genetics coming from a
lot of different angles. It is grabbing this hybrid vigour, but
the Southdown’s purity has the ability to dominate its progeny to
get your carcass, muscular conformation and growth side all uniform.”
The southdown produces what the meat industry wants
when sired with maternal ewes bred in composite flocks to produce
more lambs, he says. |
Clifton Downs Stud was started by the partnership of Chris Medlicott's
late grandfather, Jack, and father, Bill, in 1956.
Friends visiting from Australia in the 1970s had bought a ewe at
a dispersal sale at the internationally renowned Punchbowl Stud,
outside Oamaru. The ewe cost $400, a considerable sum of money in
those days. It was given to Chris Medlicott, aged 15 at the time,
as a thank you gift for his family's hospitality. The ewe soon proved
its worth, coming first at the Invercargill Royal Show as a two-tooth
with a set of twins in 1979.
Ten ewes were needed for a stud to he registered, so Medlicott
was given another one by Southdown breeder John Macaulay, and his
father gave the other eight.
Medlicott called the stud Tasvic Downs, with Tasvic being a shortened
version of Tasmania and Victoria, the Australian states from where
the visitors who had given the first ewe had come. Today the stud
is registered as Tasvic Family Trust, which Medlicott manages. He
has also been running Clifton Downs Stud separately on the same
farm since the retirement of his father two years ago.
The Medlicott's farm is in the Hook district, just outside the
Waimate township. Clifton Downs is the original family farm on 143ha
of rolling downlands lying on clay soils. Between the two studs,
the farm carries about 230 to 240 ewes. After a short stud breeding
life, older rams go to Medlicott's commercial ewe flock on a 200ha
leased block about 16km from the homestead farm. He runs 1400 commercial
Romney ewes mated to a Southdown terminal sire as well as a 200
Romney ewe stud flock. Another 400 composite ewe hoggets are grazed
on contract for another family, with Medlicott keeping the lambs
for slaughter.
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Medlicott
Southdowns 
