The White Suffolk is Australia’s fastest growing sheep breed and it has a place here in New Zealand.
They are a big bodied animal, but having said that they are easy to handle. They have clean heads and points and often their bellies are also wool free.
Meat Production:
The White Suffolk is noted for its easy care characteristics, its ability to adapt to wide-ranging environmental conditions and its ability and versatility to meet the ever increasing demand to supply high yielding, lean lamb carcasses.
We have found the White Suffolk produces good quality early maturing lambs whether they are purebreds or crossbreds. Our lambs average around 35-36kgs weaning weights around 14 weeks of age. Some of our top purebred ewes are weaning 50kg lambs at that age. Of course it depends on what sort of season we
are experiencing at the time. Fertility:
The purebred ewes in a good year lamb at 200% and in harder, tighter feed years lamb around 180%.
We used the White Suffolk rams across cast for age Perendale ewes for four seasons and they lambed consistently at 175+% each season.
White Suffolk rams are noted for their fertility and libido meaning they can be mated at any time of the year.
Lambing:
When mated to clean, smooth shouldered White Suffolk sires, ewes will have minimal lambing problems. This results in a high percentage of robust, early maturing lambs.
The ewes are excellent mothers regularly producing twins and often triplets that they have no trouble looking after.
Our ewes lamb un-shepherded each year and we consistently tail 180+ % lambs from them.
We have had ewes produce 4 and 5 lambs per lambing.
