This week on the Head Shepherd podcast we have Charlie Wootton.
Charlie is currently based in Adelaide but is originally from Jigsaw Farms in South West Victoria.

Charlie is doing his honours project on the "Magnificent Maidens" project, which is the topic of todays podcast.

The MLA funded PDS project, "Magnificent Maidens",  is to demonstrate best-bet management of maiden ewes on their reproductive performance and carryover effects on subsequent performance. 

"There's not much research done on maiden merino hoggets that join at 18-19 months of age" Charlie says. He also says that improving maiden hogget performance is a "low hanging fruit."

Maiden ewes can represent up to 30% of the whole farm ewe flock and their reproductive performance is usually 20-30% lower than that achieved at their subsequent joinings.

"You can't prioritise all of the sheep in your flock. So that means that maiden hoggets are often put on the back burner [...] and forgotten about until their first joining at 18 months of age"

Mark says when it comes to putting that weight on maidens, "Do it early and do it the easy way rather than trying to stack weight on at the end."

"It's about working out how we do that in a cost effective way." Agrees Charlie.

Mark and Charlie go on to discuss the results of the trials and what the key drivers are to maiden performance.

"For every one kilo increase in live weight at joining there was a 2.2% increase in reproductive rate" Charlie says. "We also found that during joining, weight gain is positively correlated with an increasing scanning rate. For every 100g per day of increased weight gain, during the joining period there, was a 7.3% increase in reproductive rate"

If you would like to hear more from Charlie and learn how to improve the performance of your maiden ewes, you can attend our FREE online course for the Magnificent Maiden project.

The course will be run over 3 x 1 hr sessions over 4 weeks - starting 5pm AEDT Wed 2 November

Presentations and project progress updates will be given by: 

• Dr Mark Ferguson, neXtgen Agri
• Dr Andrew Thompson, Murdoch University
• Charlie Wootton.

For more information about this project check out our project site here: https://www.nextgenagri.com/magnificent-maidens
https://www.nextgenagri.com/articles/magnificent-maidens

Head Shepherd is brought to you by neXtgen Agri International Limited. We help livestock farmers get the most out of the genetics they farm with. Get in touch with us if you would like to hear more about how we can help you do what you do best: [email protected].

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