Gnowangerup, WA, farmers Ken and Wayne Pech have started their own trial to compare the susceptibility to fly strike of mulesed, non-mulesed and clipped Merino lambs on their property.
The family runs 13,000 Merino breeding ewes and instigated the trial because, according to Wayne, too many groups of people had conflicting opinions.
"Rather than listen to people with vested interests we wanted to try different things and see how they related to our property and our management," Wayne said.
While the trial is essentially for their own benefit Wayne said if anyone asks he'd be happy to talk about what they are doing, but warns their result will differ slightly from what others can expect because of their management system and the bloodlines they are using.
The Pech's flock is based on Barloo, Woodyarrup and Quailerup bloodlines and Wayne said as farmers they just want to run a successful Merino operation.
This year they drafted off three groups of 200 July-drop lambs each comprising 100 ewes and 100 wethers.
At mulesing in August one group was left unmulesed, one group had clips applied and the third group received the normal mulesing with Tri Solfen.
The groups are being run together as a single mob and Wayne says it will be at least another year before they can make a full assessment of how well the sheep fare.
* Extract from story in this week's Farm Weekly, December 4.
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