Stud History
Moutere Downs Romney and Poll Dorset Romney stud is located in Upper Moutere. The original farm was purchased in 1959 by the Moore bro’s Ray and John. Since then a number of other blocks have been added. Today we farm about 650ha made up of 450ha freehold and 200ha of lease, running 3500 Romney and Poll Dorset ewes, 1000 hoggets, 100 beef cows and about 220 trade cattle.
Breeding Philosophy
The farm has traditionally run Romney ewes with a small stud set up in 1970’s to breed our own rams. We followed the current animal health thinking of the day and drenched lambs regularly, drenched the hogget’s and ewes with long acting injections, and capsules and basically kept the drench companies in business. In the late ’90’s we decided there had to be a better way. We had read all about the onset of drench failure because of overuse it was about that time that we read an article in the Straight Furrow about a breeder in Northland who was breeding for Parasite resistance in sheep. We liked Gordon Levet’s policy of putting pressure on rams and selecting for Worm Resistance, Foot Rot Resistance and Facial Eczema tolerance. After buying his top resistant rams we have now been able to reduce drenching so that the majority of Rams for sale have never been drenched.