Pendarra White Suffolk Stud - History and background

For a detailed view of the recent history within our stud, also visit the "Latest News" pages.

Pendarra White Suffolk Stud was founded in 1996 with the purchase of White Suffolk ewes from predominantly Langley Heights and Thurlstone bloodlines. Ewes from many other top performing studs have been introduced giving us a good sound genetic base on which to build.

In addition to using the best rams available, an annual A.I. program using some of the top ranked sires from across Australia ensures that we are using the best genetics within the breed. We are also participants in the National Young Sires Program (Superwhites) giving us access to some of the best young White Suffolk rams from around the country.

Our mature ewe flock currently stands at 500 making us one of the largest White Suffolk Studs in Australia. This gives us the opportunity to use the versatility of the White Suffolk breed to select rams that best suit our clients requirements.

We believe one type of ram cannot consistently produce lambs for a range of markets, and with the use of Lambplan EBV's, we can assist clients to select the type of ram that will give them the best opportunity to produce lambs that best suit their targeted market. Our aim is to produce rams with high growth rates and high muscling, at all times being aware of penalties of producing rams that are likely to lay on excessive fat. Rams (and ewes) are allowed to develop under paddock conditions, allowing an accurate measure of early growth rate and ensuring they will perform when conditions are less favourable. Those not performing and not true to type are culled immediately.

We are also conscious of the consumer preferences for tenderness and taste and are aware of the link between these attributes and animal temperament. The placid nature of the sheep within our stud will go a long way to ensuring that our rams will produce a premium product that the consumer will accept.

In 2000, a small number of the stud ewes were joined to White Dorper rams to produce a sheep with a little more hardiness, higher feed conversion ratio as well as more muscling. We are continuing this crossing program given that the first drop of lambs produced some outstanding results.

In 2004, our breeding program was expanded to include the joining of 80 ewe lambs to selected ram lambs with some very pleasing results giving us a total of close to 600 ewes joined. We also resurrected a program we began some years ago, that is the selection of the White Suffolk as a Maternal Sire. See our news page 2004 for details on a trial we are conducting.

Since 2003/04 we have been participating in, and conducting lamb trials to benchmark our sires against the best genetics within the White Suffolk breed. For details of these results browse through the "Latest News" pages. The results of these trials have shown that our initial aims and objectives have produced some outstanding genetics that are providing our commercial clients with higher returns.