PERENDALE - Meat

Pasture - Raised Perendale Lambs

When it comes to choosing healthy proteins, lamb is a delicious and healthy choice for fulfilling your high quality protein needs. When raised on pasture, lamb is a lean and nutrient-dense food that naturally contains 12 essential nutrients required for good health including iron, zinc, and B vitamins.

The Perendale Breed leading the way with science

In 2010 the New Zealand Perendale Sheep society embarked on an industry-leading progeny trial of the Perendale breed through identifying some of the nation's leading Perendale Sires with superior growth and meat quality attributes from a base of over 28,000 registered and recorded ewes. This had exciting implications for our Australian Perendale breeders due to the strong genetic links that many of our stud flocks have to these New Zealand bloodlines.

Traits recorded in the trial included - Weaning Weight, Slaughter Weight, Dressing Out %, Hindquarter, Loin and Shoulder Yield, Total Meat Yield, Fat Colour, Meat Colour, Meat pH, Fat Cover, Marbling, Shelf Life and Tenderness.

AgResearch Scientists in New Zealand analysing Perendale loins

The next characteristic of testing also included Meat Taste (the number one priority for consumers) along with a number of maternal traits being measured on the female progeny including Joining Weight, Condition Scores, Lamb Survival, Culling Ratio and Longevity. These traits are areas that the Perendale breed is renowned for; high survivability, robust longevity and performance even under challenging environmental conditions such as those our Perendale breed encounters here in Australia.

Data results in this New Zealand trial were proven to be extremely useful in showing the Perendale breed to be a genuine 'self-replacing' breed (termed 'dual purpose maternal' in New Zealand) with all Sires in the trial producing progeny that have exceeded industry benchmarks on meat quality traits - such as Perendale lambs with total meat yields of up to 63.2%!

Information is power and we are delighted for these studies to be backing the Perendale breed as a powerhouse in producing quality meat and wool for today's savvy consumer.