December 17, 2025 • 10 mins
Peter Gardyne looks at weaning weights and why he thinks heavy weights need to be at the front of thinking.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Jimmy Barnes is the artist.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
The song is driving wheels pretty much what's happening and
all the farms around Otago and Southland and around the
country for that matter. As you get on the wine
down or the wind up to Chris disappearing, how you
look at it. So next we catch up with Peter
Gardine farming and Netdil has been all go this morning
and into the afternoon.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Pete Howse sings, Yeah, good good, you got a really
good song there.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
It's one of those lift yup, pump you up songs.
And the truck has just pulled out of the sheepyards
up here at Pyramid, and the transport must be busy
because one of the big cheese is on the truck
and he's it's a bit sweatier, I think than the
truck than it is in the office.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
One of the big cheese is in the truck. You know,
guns into the gunnel.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Right, Oh yeah, no. The transports at winning time they
do a pretty awesome And we used to cut our
own lambs. And I know how nufty it is and
how hard it is to organize everything. And yeah, all
those truck drives, all those other people they play a
super important part to our industry.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah, a big shout out as well everybody on the
road in the trucks, but the stockees, everybody organizing the trucks,
the dispatches and the likes.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
It's a hell of a job in the middle of December.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
I know.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
We used to. I used to have a bitch of
stock feed side of things as well. And yeah, as
you get to these public holidays and stuff, it can
make a lot of these scheduling pretty tracky. And yeah,
there's a lot of those unseen people that we sometimes
sho get about when they're farming.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yeah, twenty four hours in the day, that's a great point.
So you've been weaning.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
How's it been. Are you quite happy with your numbers?
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Yeah, we're pretty happy. We've got about thirteen fifty away
and that's all over forty kgs, so we're sort of
hanging up around that twenty and a half, well, just
over that roughly. Yeah. I'm a big believer in big lambs.
I really wanted to go bigger this year, but we
are just struggling for moisture at Napdale, so we've we've
(02:05):
kept the weights down and weave it yeah, but we
had a couple of antibiotic ones and they went twenty
twos and a half and quite like the look of
that sheet actually, and that's sort of in the future.
I want to keep pushing, pushing heavier.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Ah Sease, you'll be looking at two hundred and twenty
our backs straight off the calf even more, wouldn't you.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Yeah, we're doing about that at the moment. But when
you looked at that other sheet, it was two hundred
and forty four or something like that, and that was
even with the antibodic deductions. Yeah, so we'll click on
up to twenty threes probably again this season, like we
did last season in February. And I think the answer
to the less sheep is actually just grow your lambs bigger.
(02:45):
To put another two kilograms of carcass weight on, that's
ten percent more production and it doesn't take ten percent
more feed when you look at your whole sheep enterprise,
and I think it's easier to yeah, just pack more
weight on animals. A It's like my father say, he
can only kill them once and not all of the
thing's great for that time. That I think is pretty good.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
You've always been a big believer in heavy lambs though
going away regardless.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Definitely, Yeah, And like where we are at the moment,
we're on pretty dry health country there at Pyramid. It's
only a small block, but we take them home and
we finish them. And I was surprised to have big
lambs who got away here off the hill. The aim
here is really just to have nice, healthy lambs that
are easy to take home and finish, rather than lots
(03:30):
of lambs at the winning time. But yeah, I just
see the feed efficiency. We're doing a weave it with
Simon's leni Epicus bio on farmax modeling. You know what
air feeds per kilogram of dry mat every turns are
in sheef and beef. And we're really trying to push
the boundaries on that because I want to I want
(03:50):
to be in business and I want to stay in business,
and I want to thrive in business. And we can
only do that if we keep pushing the boundaries. You know,
we're not doing what we're doing thirty years ago, and
that's exciting.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
So how often are you changing your goals? You're talking
about twenty two k lambs going to the works, and
if you're achieving that now what are you thinking on
a note like six twelve months down the line. How
does your brain operate in that capacity?
Speaker 3 (04:17):
How my brain operates. It's a loaded, loaded question, and
you could ask anybody and you've get some pretty interesting
answers on suggest.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Well, I'm going straight to the horse's mouth around it.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Yeah, it's a very few question. I personally don't have
a lot of goals around weight. It's all about maximizing
the financials. And why I say that is because we're
on a low rainfall area at home and we've just
got to roll with what we've got. So if we've
got feed, we utilize it. If we don't, we pulled
the pin. So we have just sold some new lambs
that we were going to sell anyway, we've pulled that
(04:48):
sale or forward a month because we are types of feed.
We only had twenty eight meals in November and twenty
eight meals so far this month, so I'm sort of
hanging out for a bit more moisture. But to go
to I look at the schedule and I look at
how heavy can we go before we get deducted, And
as the goal posting rays, we just keep going up.
(05:10):
When I know you had a week yarn about eating
quality with old made up at mile Flats. Yeah, James Egger,
and eating quality has got a lot to do with
how well and animals finished. And long story short, the
bigger it is, the fatter and private is the way
goo eating quality. I think we should be illegal to
(05:33):
kill lambs under eighteen kgs or under seventeen kgs. And
I actually think they need to go down to a
flat land farm and get finished properly. And that's not
trying to be offensive or anything like that. It's just
those lean, hard lambs are not a good eating experience
and we want to push the limits on im from
the top end. But I think it's more important to
(05:55):
reduce the bad eating experiences of you know, lamb, and
the same gast beef too. But with beef, if it's
not that great, they're just minted it up and it
doesn't really matter. Yeah, because if we want to if
we want to be serious about a quality product, it's
actually got to be a quality product.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
But a seventeen k lamb at the same time, so
as catered for by the market, yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
It is.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
I And there's a difference between a really prime seventeen
and a hard seventeen. Yeah, and yeah, like I would
eat a fat prime lamb any day of the week,
like a pea lamb over a y lamb any day
of the week. And when you look into the genetic
side of things, there's not a perfect correlation, but there
(06:42):
is a pretty steady correlation between fat on the outside
to fat on the inside in regards and tra muscular fat.
And yeah, how we've bred. Probably in the last twenty years,
there has been a penalization in the terminal sawer and
DEXes against like fat, and that has harmed us a
wee bit, which is a wee bit unfortunate.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
So when you look into the next twelve months of
the farming landscape, what do you see?
Speaker 3 (07:09):
What I see? I'm really hoping to see a whole
lot of rain, you know what I see? I think
the sheep and beef thing looks pretty tidy. I still
am nervous to say that it's going to last. Some
of the other correspondents to do it. They probably have
a bit more informed than I am, But to me,
it'sistant that's got the runs on the board. While it's there,
(07:31):
I think there's going to be a continuation of people
pushing the boundaries and challenging what's happened in the past.
And I only say that because that's what's happened for
the last one hundred and fifty years of agriculture in
New Zealand. And if we want to stay relevant, then
we're a world away from most of our markets. That's
what we've got to do. I love the idea of
(07:53):
things like Halter and all this technology, and people will
say these good things about it, bad things about it,
but it's all the evolution of what we do, and
it's it's cool, and farming's always done it in the past.
No one's No one's still plowing with a horse.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Are they, unless you're doing vendors plowing.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Perhaps no, unless we sorry, no one's commercially farming with
a horse. And I just see that evolution and I
think that, like you know, Holters, I see AI as
being a real big asset to farming. And why I
say that is like the jobs that are getting taken
away by AI are not really our jobs. They are
(08:38):
all the jobs you hate. I don't see accountancy and
those sort of industries really getting a huge growth in
the future because A is just going to dominate that. Yeah,
I mean we wrote an article with GDP not that
long ago, and yeah, well you can put your words
into a bit of paper and be dyslexic like me,
put it into that and get up and work alongside it,
(09:01):
and it's amazing what that will do. And yeah, it's
it's pretty exciting. I mean, you can build apps. Even
as a farmer, you can do lots of things, and
I think it's just unlocks a whole lot of stuff
that you know, we haven't seen. Yeah, and I think
like one of them we're talking about the other day
(09:21):
is right now, you're bit tight for Tucker. Put in
all the all the schedule projections and then decide what's
the least profitable class of stock for the next eight
weeks and ditch that class of stock.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah, hey, good on your pete. We'll let you carry on.
It's pretty busy in your neck of the woods at
the moment. But thanks for your time on the Muster
and throughout the year. Enjoy the Christmas season and we'll
catch up in the new year.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Yeah, no worries. I wish everyone out there a great
Christmas and hope everyone out there gets a bit of
a break because they all descrive it.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Pete, Guardian of Napdale.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
You're listening to the Muster, remembering text win to five
double O nine to go into the drawer to win
a one hundred dollars Preezy card thanks to Euroegry.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
That's part of the Muster's Christmas giveaway. Up next, Joseph Mooney,
Southend MP,
Jimmy Barnes is the artist.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
The song is driving wheels pretty much what's happening and
all the farms around Otago and Southland and around the
country for that matter. As you get on the wine
down or the wind up to Chris disappearing, how you
look at it. So next we catch up with Peter
Gardine farming and Netdil has been all go this morning
and into the afternoon.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Pete Howse sings, Yeah, good good, you got a really
good song there.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
It's one of those lift yup, pump you up songs.
And the truck has just pulled out of the sheepyards
up here at Pyramid, and the transport must be busy
because one of the big cheese is on the truck
and he's it's a bit sweatier, I think than the
truck than it is in the office.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
One of the big cheese is in the truck. You know,
guns into the gunnel.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Right, Oh yeah, no. The transports at winning time they
do a pretty awesome And we used to cut our
own lambs. And I know how nufty it is and
how hard it is to organize everything. And yeah, all
those truck drives, all those other people they play a
super important part to our industry.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah, a big shout out as well everybody on the
road in the trucks, but the stockees, everybody organizing the trucks,
the dispatches and the likes.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
It's a hell of a job in the middle of December.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
I know.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
We used to. I used to have a bitch of
stock feed side of things as well. And yeah, as
you get to these public holidays and stuff, it can
make a lot of these scheduling pretty tracky. And yeah,
there's a lot of those unseen people that we sometimes
sho get about when they're farming.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yeah, twenty four hours in the day, that's a great point.
So you've been weaning.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
How's it been. Are you quite happy with your numbers?
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Yeah, we're pretty happy. We've got about thirteen fifty away
and that's all over forty kgs, so we're sort of
hanging up around that twenty and a half, well, just
over that roughly. Yeah. I'm a big believer in big lambs.
I really wanted to go bigger this year, but we
are just struggling for moisture at Napdale, so we've we've
(02:05):
kept the weights down and weave it yeah, but we
had a couple of antibiotic ones and they went twenty
twos and a half and quite like the look of
that sheet actually, and that's sort of in the future.
I want to keep pushing, pushing heavier.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Ah Sease, you'll be looking at two hundred and twenty
our backs straight off the calf even more, wouldn't you.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Yeah, we're doing about that at the moment. But when
you looked at that other sheet, it was two hundred
and forty four or something like that, and that was
even with the antibodic deductions. Yeah, so we'll click on
up to twenty threes probably again this season, like we
did last season in February. And I think the answer
to the less sheep is actually just grow your lambs bigger.
(02:45):
To put another two kilograms of carcass weight on, that's
ten percent more production and it doesn't take ten percent
more feed when you look at your whole sheep enterprise,
and I think it's easier to yeah, just pack more
weight on animals. A It's like my father say, he
can only kill them once and not all of the
thing's great for that time. That I think is pretty good.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
You've always been a big believer in heavy lambs though
going away regardless.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Definitely, Yeah, And like where we are at the moment,
we're on pretty dry health country there at Pyramid. It's
only a small block, but we take them home and
we finish them. And I was surprised to have big
lambs who got away here off the hill. The aim
here is really just to have nice, healthy lambs that
are easy to take home and finish, rather than lots
(03:30):
of lambs at the winning time. But yeah, I just
see the feed efficiency. We're doing a weave it with
Simon's leni Epicus bio on farmax modeling. You know what
air feeds per kilogram of dry mat every turns are
in sheef and beef. And we're really trying to push
the boundaries on that because I want to I want
(03:50):
to be in business and I want to stay in business,
and I want to thrive in business. And we can
only do that if we keep pushing the boundaries. You know,
we're not doing what we're doing thirty years ago, and
that's exciting.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
So how often are you changing your goals? You're talking
about twenty two k lambs going to the works, and
if you're achieving that now what are you thinking on
a note like six twelve months down the line. How
does your brain operate in that capacity?
Speaker 3 (04:17):
How my brain operates. It's a loaded, loaded question, and
you could ask anybody and you've get some pretty interesting
answers on suggest.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Well, I'm going straight to the horse's mouth around it.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Yeah, it's a very few question. I personally don't have
a lot of goals around weight. It's all about maximizing
the financials. And why I say that is because we're
on a low rainfall area at home and we've just
got to roll with what we've got. So if we've
got feed, we utilize it. If we don't, we pulled
the pin. So we have just sold some new lambs
that we were going to sell anyway, we've pulled that
(04:48):
sale or forward a month because we are types of feed.
We only had twenty eight meals in November and twenty
eight meals so far this month, so I'm sort of
hanging out for a bit more moisture. But to go
to I look at the schedule and I look at
how heavy can we go before we get deducted, And
as the goal posting rays, we just keep going up.
(05:10):
When I know you had a week yarn about eating
quality with old made up at mile Flats. Yeah, James Egger,
and eating quality has got a lot to do with
how well and animals finished. And long story short, the
bigger it is, the fatter and private is the way
goo eating quality. I think we should be illegal to
(05:33):
kill lambs under eighteen kgs or under seventeen kgs. And
I actually think they need to go down to a
flat land farm and get finished properly. And that's not
trying to be offensive or anything like that. It's just
those lean, hard lambs are not a good eating experience
and we want to push the limits on im from
the top end. But I think it's more important to
(05:55):
reduce the bad eating experiences of you know, lamb, and
the same gast beef too. But with beef, if it's
not that great, they're just minted it up and it
doesn't really matter. Yeah, because if we want to if
we want to be serious about a quality product, it's
actually got to be a quality product.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
But a seventeen k lamb at the same time, so
as catered for by the market, yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
It is.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
I And there's a difference between a really prime seventeen
and a hard seventeen. Yeah, and yeah, like I would
eat a fat prime lamb any day of the week,
like a pea lamb over a y lamb any day
of the week. And when you look into the genetic
side of things, there's not a perfect correlation, but there
(06:42):
is a pretty steady correlation between fat on the outside
to fat on the inside in regards and tra muscular fat.
And yeah, how we've bred. Probably in the last twenty years,
there has been a penalization in the terminal sawer and
DEXes against like fat, and that has harmed us a
wee bit, which is a wee bit unfortunate.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
So when you look into the next twelve months of
the farming landscape, what do you see?
Speaker 3 (07:09):
What I see? I'm really hoping to see a whole
lot of rain, you know what I see? I think
the sheep and beef thing looks pretty tidy. I still
am nervous to say that it's going to last. Some
of the other correspondents to do it. They probably have
a bit more informed than I am, But to me,
it'sistant that's got the runs on the board. While it's there,
(07:31):
I think there's going to be a continuation of people
pushing the boundaries and challenging what's happened in the past.
And I only say that because that's what's happened for
the last one hundred and fifty years of agriculture in
New Zealand. And if we want to stay relevant, then
we're a world away from most of our markets. That's
what we've got to do. I love the idea of
(07:53):
things like Halter and all this technology, and people will
say these good things about it, bad things about it,
but it's all the evolution of what we do, and
it's it's cool, and farming's always done it in the past.
No one's No one's still plowing with a horse.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Are they, unless you're doing vendors plowing.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Perhaps no, unless we sorry, no one's commercially farming with
a horse. And I just see that evolution and I
think that, like you know, Holters, I see AI as
being a real big asset to farming. And why I
say that is like the jobs that are getting taken
away by AI are not really our jobs. They are
(08:38):
all the jobs you hate. I don't see accountancy and
those sort of industries really getting a huge growth in
the future because A is just going to dominate that. Yeah,
I mean we wrote an article with GDP not that
long ago, and yeah, well you can put your words
into a bit of paper and be dyslexic like me,
put it into that and get up and work alongside it,
(09:01):
and it's amazing what that will do. And yeah, it's
it's pretty exciting. I mean, you can build apps. Even
as a farmer, you can do lots of things, and
I think it's just unlocks a whole lot of stuff
that you know, we haven't seen. Yeah, and I think
like one of them we're talking about the other day
(09:21):
is right now, you're bit tight for Tucker. Put in
all the all the schedule projections and then decide what's
the least profitable class of stock for the next eight
weeks and ditch that class of stock.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah, hey, good on your pete. We'll let you carry on.
It's pretty busy in your neck of the woods at
the moment. But thanks for your time on the Muster
and throughout the year. Enjoy the Christmas season and we'll
catch up in the new year.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Yeah, no worries. I wish everyone out there a great
Christmas and hope everyone out there gets a bit of
a break because they all descrive it.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Pete, Guardian of Napdale.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
You're listening to the Muster, remembering text win to five
double O nine to go into the drawer to win
a one hundred dollars Preezy card thanks to Euroegry.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
That's part of the Muster's Christmas giveaway. Up next, Joseph Mooney,
Southend MP,
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