Four generations of the Herbert family have farmed in Eurongilly, entering the area in 1913 with a small holding of just 160 hectares.
Today, the Herberts own and manage five properties and two leaseholds of diverse mixed farming country covering a total of 4500 hectares.
Our sheep enterprise
The stud flock consists of 1200 ewes producing 400 rams for our sales, the Summer Ram Lamb Sale and Spring Two Tooth Sale (see Sale page).
The commercial properties currently run a self-replacing Highlander flock of 10 000 ewes and turn off 15 000 ewes and lambs annually. Lambs are sold direct to the abattoir with a targeted carcass weight of 23kg.
First and foremost we are commercial farmers. We saw an opportunity with Highlander and FocusPrime genetics to improve the performance of our own commercial flock across the triple bottom line (financially, environmentally, and socially). Being able to share these profitable and sustainable genetics to drive production efficiency across industry is Karrawarra’s focus.”
Leo Herbert
How maternal efficiency became our focus
Leo chanced upon the Highlander and FocusPrime breeds while researching low birth weight terminal breeds in 2015. He was immediately intrigued by the moderate ewe weight, fecundity, lamb survival and evidence of Highlanders being a star performer under several diverse climatic conditions given where the sheep are born and raised in New Zealand, the UK and Uruguay.
The maternal efficiency spoken of by those producing Highlanders overseas and evidenced by 30 years of recording data in SIL-ACE (NZ’s equivalent to Lambplan) immediately resonated.
“Having ewes lambing down at 12 months, surviving, raising a lamb or two, increasing the productivity over the lifetime of the ewe was mind boggling in relation to what we had been doing. I could see the savings in feed costs, the ability to increase and decrease stocking rates through changing conditions.”
Leo Herbert
