The Kiranda Maternal is a continuation of the Highlander Maternal sheep breed, originally developed in the late 90’s by New Zealand farmers Andy Ramsden and Grant Massie, to capitalise on lamb output as the major profit driver. After experimenting with a range of breed mixes the three breed Romney x Finn x Texel best delivered on their breeding objective.

Highlander Breeding Objective from establishment

• 2 live lambs
• Low input (feed requirement, management, animal health)
• Last a long time (longevity)

In 2000 Bayden was involved with the Absolom, Beamish, Ramsden and Polson families coming together as Rissington Breedline to commercialise and develop the Highlander ‘maternal’ and Primera ‘terminal’ sheep breeds for the benefit of commercial lamb producers.
The contributing family businesses were running around 50,000 breeding ewes.

That year around 10,000 ewes including embryo recipients were established on one property to form the basis of the maternal & terminal stud flocks, scanning in around 16,500 lambs.

Sheep Geneticist Aimee Charteris came in to design the breeding programs.

Given the large scale, two new technologies were adopted to allow lambing to occur unshepherded in natural hill country conditions.

• Electronic tags and reading equipment
• Assigning parentage with DNA

The keys to developing the Highlander breed

• Diverse breeding and genotypes from the 3 component breeds
• Large scale flock to allow selection of the best performers run in natural commercial conditions with minimal human intervention
• Accurate recording assisted with EID and DNA technologies
• Multiplication of the very best genetics with AI and embryo multiplication
• Applying an efficiency index aimed at delivering the breeding objective