Hawke's Bay farmer brought 10 sheep when he was aged 9 - now he has 500 studs

Ben Dawson is only 23 and already making a name for himself in the stud sheep industry, crossing Beltex rams with Suftex ewes. Photo / Paul Taylor

When he was 9 Ben Dawson flagged the dairy scene and bought 10 sheep - now he has 500 studs.

The young Hawke's Bay farmer has been in the business of buying and selling sheep ever since. Now at 23, he's making a name for himself crossing quarter- and half-Beltex rams with Suftex ewes to breed Waihau Terminal Sires.

He's working towards producing lambs that won't need to be dagged or drenched, and is already seeing results.

The sires are producing fast-growing, high-yielding lambs, Dawson is aiming for a future where he is breeding low-maintenance lambs with high outputs.

Sheep with low input traits will be the selling point because farmers want to go on holiday, not dag sheep, Dawson said.

Ben Dawson is only 23 and already making a name for himself in the stud sheep industry, crossing Beltex rams with Suftex ewes. Photo / Paul Taylor

In November he had his first-ever auction and sold 58 out of his 63 Waihau Terminal Sires rams on the day at an average price of $1240.

The Patoka local was born into dairy rather than sheep but he wanted to try something a little different from his dairy-farming dad, Nick Dawson.

Ben Dawson said when he first saw the Suftex with their black faces and white bodies, he just liked the look of them and that's how it started.

After buying his first flock from an uncle, the young farmer would sell close to 10 rams a year up until he went off to study agriculture business and marketing at Lincoln University.

In his final year at Lindisfarne College, he built up his flock and ended up selling most of the sheep, only keeping a handful at home as they would be hard to manage while in Canterbury.

"I loved it down south and would go back in a heartbeat, but the opportunity here was too good to not have a good crack at the stud sheep thing on my own," Dawson said.

The opportunity to lease a block down the road from the family farm came at a very favourable time.

"I took the opportunity with both hands and expanded the flock from there," Dawson said.

He built the flock up to 200 ewes, which have lambed this year, plus the hoggets and from that he now has 500 stud sheep.

A Waihau Terminal Sires ewe and its two lambs from the 2021 breeding season. Ben Dawson breeds his ewes with both quarter- and half-Beltex breed rams. Photo / Supplied

"There are very few young people getting into this industry," Dawson said.

"Farmers can be very loyal and won't often change their ram breeder and that has been the hardest thing trying to pick up new clients."

He said older farmers are unlikely to give a young breeder an opportunity, as they would rather buy off a breeder they have been dealing with for 20 years.

However, Dawson knew this was what he wanted to be doing, and everything seemed to fall into place.

He said he got lucky when the owner of the farm he had been working while down south sold him some of his prime Beltex genetics.

The owner also happened to be selling one of his satellite flocks and Dawson bought all the ewes in the flock.

"It was just a great chance to have a good crack at it," Ben said.

The young farmer took a mixture of 68 rams to the Stortford Lodge saleyards.

The half-Beltex rams came from a partnership with Guy Martin from Canterbury. Martin has helped fund some of the artificial insemination costs, so the two split the progeny.

"He has been really good to me and without him, the opportunity to bring in the Beltex semen and do the AI process probably wouldn't have happened," Dawson said.