THE Proffit family and friends at the Perendale Society Conference at Mahoenui on May 11.
RAIN and major road slips along State Highway 3 did not deter about 100 breeders and their sponsors from gathering for the annual conference of the Perendale Society, at Raupuhu Stud, Māhoenui, last month.
The society’s annual three-day conference began in New Plymouth with a dinner, followed the next day by a bus trip from New Plymouth to the King Country, via the Forgotten Highway. Delegates then stayed the night at Waitomo, finally arriving at Russell and Mavis Proffit’s 1100 ha property at about noon on May 11.
Russell was presiding as this year’s national president of the society, a role his late father, Jeff Proffit, had held 30 years previously. The society celebrated this fact by presenting a life membership to Russell’s mother, Lyn Proffit, plus a posthumous life membership for Jeff.
The other major award presented at the conference was the Sir Geoffrey Perendale Cup, which is handed to a Perendale breeder in the province the conference is held in.
This year the cup went to Chris Irons and Debra Hastie, who farm at Te Waitere.
The delegates and their sponsors, drawn from King Country meat and agricultural service industries, were taken on a tour of the Proffit property, which runs both sides of SH3, followed by a lavish lunch.
Russell described Perendale as a good, active, dual-purpose breed of sheep, highly mobile, able to move to the top the hill and graze freely.
“They can always bounce back following a hard year. They’re a good hardy sheep and have excellent mid-micron wool. Sure, it’s not worth as much as we would like at present but there is always hope,” Russell said.
He said Perendale was an easy-care breed and would give your farming operation effortless lambing, good mothering and survival, plus excellent fertility with low losses from scanning to lambing. The lambs were easily finished to produce a lean, heavyweight carcass ideal for the chilled trade.
Gilbert Timms, a life member of the society, said he had been a member since the society was formed in 1960.
The Perendale was a commercially successful breed and a very important hill country sheep, Gilbert said.
“When I was a shepherd aged 17 or 18, I would break in five horses a year and do lambing beats on horseback. But after our farm moved in to Perendales, we abandoned the lambing beats and left them to just lamb on their own.”
Gilbert said Perendales had broken in a lot of second and third-class country.
“The trouble is now a lot of good hill country land where Perendales have done their best, is going into pine trees. That’s just a criminal offence in my view.”
Gilbert said the breed had gone ahead in leaps and bounds genetics wise over the years, though he had seen the number of studs plummet over the years and there were not the numbers of stud ewes around that there once were.
“Other breeds and composites have sort of come and gone over the years but the Perendale is still hanging in there.”
