LIFETIME WOOL. 8. PROGENY WOOL PRODUCTION AND QUALITY

The perceived costs of maintaining ewe liveweights and condition during the autumn/winter feed-gap means that ewes often lose 0.5-1.5 of a condition score by mid-pregnancy or lambing. Poor ewe nutrition during pregnancy and lactation can influence wool follicle initiation and maturation processes in the developing Merino lamb (Short 1955). These effects on the follicle population are permanent, and have a direct impact on both the amount and fibre diameter of wool produced for the duration of the lamb's life (Kelly et al. 1996), but their importance in the context of developing practical ewe feeding systems has received little attention. The Lifetime Wool project (Thompson and Oldham 2004) aims to determine ewe nutrition targets that optimise ewe and progeny production and systems profitability. This paper provides preliminary data on the characteristics of hogget wool from progeny that experienced different maternal environments. The animals used in this study were progeny from medium wool Merino ewes, born in Aug-Sep and Jul-Aug 2001 at the Victorian and Western Australian sites, respectively. The Victorian progeny were shorn at 5 and 17 months of age. The Western Australian progeny were shorn at 11 and 21 months of age. Prior to each shearing, a mid-side sample was taken from all animals and measured for washing yield and mean fibre diameter (MFD). At shearing, an un-skirted greasy fleece weight was taken and multiplied by yield to derive a clean fleece weight (CFW). The preliminary data reported here is for the shearings at 17 and 21 months of age for progeny from the 2 sites, respectively.