Head Shepherd
Mark Ferguson from neXtgen Agri brings you the latest in livestock, genetics, innovation and technology. We focus on sheep and beef farming in Australia and New Zealand and the people doing great things in those industries.
Head Shepherd
Breeding a Balanced Sheep with Alan Rissmann
Breeding a balanced sheep is no easy feat. But with a head for numbers and a great mindset, our guest this week, Alan Rissmann, is doing just that.
With the business tagline 'We breed sheep to work for you, not make work for you', it's no surprise that Rissmerino breeds sheep for higher welfare traits and reduced workload. In his conversation with Mark, Alan dives into the 'why' behind this.
"In the industry, there's been this perception that sheep are hard work and they just have to be hard work," says Alan. Quoting the adage, "Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you'll be right," Alan shares why the belief that sheep are hard work can hold producers back from improving their sheep production.
"If you don't think sheep can survive without a drench, without a foot trim, you're not going to try to fix it.... But, if you do think that this is a stupid waste of time, like I do, then you're going to do something to fix it and there are ways to fix that."
Mark and Alan discuss the traits that Rissmerino base their breeding decisions on and what they are looking for in a sheep - low micron, low adult weight, good growth curve, increased fertility, worm and fly resistance, structural soundness and clean skin. Sounds like a dream sheep!
Alan is a firm believer in running large mobs of sheep so that they face the same challenges. "They're all in one mob pretty much all year. There are just five weeks they get pulled out to be single-sired and then five weeks again over lambing time. The rest of the year the sheep run just on grass, all in one big mob so they go compete with each other for survival and I think that's very important," he says.
The location of the Rissmann's property offers many environmental challenges, which means their flock is "pretty bombproof", as Alan puts it. They face heavy rain leading to pressure on wool colouring and fly, more worms and also feet issues. This, along with Rissmerino's dedicated data collection, hard work in genetic selection and strict culling policy, have rewarded them with some exciting merino sheep with plenty of potential for handling future challenges.
This is an inspiring podcast that highlights the success that can come when you put all of the best-practice principles into action.
Head Shepherd is brought to you by neXtgen Agri International Limited. We help livestock farmers get the most out of the genetics they farm with. Get in touch with us if you would like to hear more about how we can help you do what you do best: info@nextgenagri.com.
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Welcome to the Head Shepherd podcast. I'm your host, mark Ferguson, ceo at Next Gen Agri International, where we help livestock managers to get the best out of their stock. I want to take this opportunity to thank our friends at MSD Animal Health in Orflex for sponsoring Head Shepherd again this season, and I'm also excited to introduce our mates at Heinegger as brand new sponsors of the show. Msd in Orflex, or perhaps better known as Cooper's Animal Health in Australia, offer one of New Zealand, australia's, largest livestock product portfolios, with a comprehensive suite of animal health and management products connected through identification, traceability and monitoring solutions. Like us, they see how the wealth and breadth of information born out of this podcast can help their men and their farming clients achieve their mission of the science of healthier animals.
Speaker 1:Heinegger will need a little introduction to our audience. A market leader and one-stop shop for wool harvesting and animal fibre removal, together with an expanding range of agricultural products and inputs, the Heinegger name is synonymous with quality, reliability and precision. The Heinegger team have a deep understanding of livestock agriculture, backed by Swiss engineering and a family business dedicated to manufacturing the best. It's fantastic to have both of these sponsors supporting us and bringing Head Shepherd to you each week, and now it's time to get on with this week's episode. Welcome back to Head Shepherd. This week we've got Alan Rissman along, welcome.
Speaker 2:Alan. Yeah, thanks, mark. Good to be on the show. You've been listening for a long time, it's been great.
Speaker 1:Excellent, great to have you. Yeah, normally, as you know, if you listen to a few, we start with a bit of background. So you're obviously farming up there with your family and parents and your immediate family as well, but I guess, how did you end up back on the farm? What's been the process to end up where you are now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it was a bit of an interesting process in some ways. I grew up on the farm, always loved being outside. I got three younger brothers so we just did everything together, a lot of sport together. We ended up doing distance education during high school so we would get ahead, take a couple weeks off to help out at times like shearing stuff like that. So always very involved on the farm.
Speaker 2:But Namadoy said can't come back unless you go do something else first, which is probably a good bit of advice really. But I had no idea what I wanted to do. But I loved studying. I loved maths particularly and numbers were my thing. So everyone said well, if you love maths, go do engineering. So that's what I did, going off to uni in Toowoomba for four years.
Speaker 2:There I studied my electrical engineering, which I enjoyed the study, but I was working part time throughout most of that as well in an engineering firm and I just didn't enjoy the work. It was all well. The work seemed all pretty mundane, sitting in front of a computer running numbers through. Much as I love numbers, running through just repetitive numbers. That didn't mean a whole lot to me, wasn't really my thing and I missed being outside. So I finished uni and the first thing I did was go over to Canada and train to become an alpine ski instructor, so jumped a little bit away from everything so I spent 13 weeks over there. You get pretty good. I'd only been skiing twice in my life for a week each before that. But you get pretty good doing it for 13 weeks and I'd always been pretty athletic, picked up sports pretty quick, so did that and went off teaching skiing both in Canada and Australia for the next three years and dropping back home for a month or two in between seasons and helping it how I'm on the farm.
Speaker 1:So yeah, a bit of a different bit of a talking point being the ski instructor from Gunder Windy up in Queensland, but anyway, yeah, long way from the snow, I feel the need to explain, feel the need to explain the way you live, which is in a very flat part of Australia, in a very warm part of Australia, where snow is not a frequent occurrence.
Speaker 2:Well, my brother claims we saw snow one night shooting, but I mean, it wasn't Never snowed.
Speaker 1:Could have been mosquitoes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and completely flat, as you say. We've got like a couple metres of rise across our entire property. It's just dead flat. So yeah, yeah very different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, excellent. So then, yeah, from ski instructor back to farming. So obviously, for a while there you were running commercial sheep and cattle before you decided to start breeding ramps.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. So we eventually decided that skiing probably not the best environment for bringing up kids. I've gotten married in the meantime and I'd always wanted to come back to the farm, probably especially once I realised that I didn't enjoy my engineering work. But I'd always kind of felt like I wasn't able to step up, to be to come back home. It always seemed like there's so much to know, so much to be able to do, to do it well. But I got some encouragement by a couple of the blokes in my stints back at home People that were working part time said, yeah, just give it a crack, anyone can do it, and you've got lots of experience, having run stock all your life. So, yeah, we came back and, yeah, running Angus cattle, merino used and joined the culls to crossbred ramps and done a bit of cropping as well on the side. So, fingers in all the pies. But yeah, breeding sheep Well breeding, but particularly sheep's always been what I've been passionate about doing. What's been, yeah, what's interested me the most.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting. And obviously as you get into ram breeding you realise how many numbers that are involved, which is probably why you take into it like a duck to water, Like the breeding values are kind of almost like a computing language. I think we've done their own and something that we sort of can be a babble away about, obviously, and that level of numbers is put you in a good spot to start breeding ramps.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I reckon it has. But, yeah, we ended up. We came back. The reason we started the stud? Well, an offer came up, I suppose, in front of us, and dad had been trying to buy land for quite a while. Like his dad bought land for his kids, each of them as they got married, and that was well. There was a lot more dual back then. They paid off one block within 12 months. So, man, it's pretty ridiculous to think you could possibly do anything like that today. So with my three brothers, part of the succession plan was well, how can we maybe add more value to the current block of land rather than trying to buy four separate blocks of land for each of the kids? So when the offer for the purchase of the Marino stud came up, we went ahead with that. There's a way to add value so that we can, yeah, more of a quick come back home to the land.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right. So, al, when was that? And, yeah, I guess, what's been the process since then?
Speaker 2:So that was back in 2018. So it's coming up on towards the end of 2018. So it's coming up on five years now. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, yeah, and so obviously, being again, we need to kind of get a listeners, a bit of a head around where you live. And yeah, I guess the challenges, the unique challenges, are there, but also obviously that part of the world is it's rhino sheep and humidity aren't always good friends. It can get quite sticky out there. Obviously you've been through well in your time since a child. You would have seen every drought and every flood and everything in between, and yeah, it's a pretty unforgiving landscape up there in Queensland.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not a lot of reliability in the rainfall pattern sometimes. Yeah, I mean it's something like two thirds of the rain falls around. About 60% of the rain falls in six months over summer, so it's a slightly summer dominant rainfall. But I mean, every single month you look at can have four or five plus inches, and every single month you look at in the history can have zero inches. So it's pretty variable. There's no, yeah, not a lot of predictability to it.
Speaker 2:And there is something about our country that I'm guessing it's humidity, maybe mixed with long grass, that often says it's more of a cattle block really. But we have huge pressure on whiteness of wool. Yeah, so that's a big issue for us is to make sure we keep our wool white so that we don't get fly strike. We'd buy rams and we'd go out to the studs and be peering under their bellies trying to see any spec of cream or colour anywhere in the sheep. We wouldn't find any, but come back home in 10 months later they're yellow all over at home. So pretty big selection pressure here for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is awesome in its own right. I mean, it's obviously challenged around there, but it means that the sheep can go anywhere from there because they're. I guess we often think high rainfall needing sort of waterproof walls for high rainfall, but it tends to be, if it's very winter, dominant rainfall and it never gets warm while it's raining, then we don't see a lot of colour issues in those environments. It's the edge of that. It's the spring of that environment, or your environment, where you get a lot of pressure on wool colour and therefore body strike, which does mean that almost every year you get some selection pressure on it, which is good, because down south it might be one or two in 10 years where you get that real selection pressure.
Speaker 2:No, certainly most years, and because we've got a lot of taller grass too, taller, drier grass. It just sort of stands there and the sheep are walking through it all the time and 2021, 22 is obviously the classic example of that but rained every Friday for weeks on end. The poor old sheep didn't like it, didn't appreciate that walking through water being wet all the time for months on end. But, yeah, I thought it was great actually because we didn't treat them for fly or anything. We'd just run around them every week, pull off the flyblown the couple that got blown around the tail, pull them off and treat them, and they got sent to the meatworks next time the truck came and you just I think you end up. You need those sort of conditions sometimes to make your flock pretty bomb proof.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. And the other thing you've got there is obviously hermonchus or barbers pole, which kills sheep pretty swiftly when it gets out of control, and so that puts a nice dump of worm pressure on those sheep as well, particularly in those wetter years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, so again, we've got to just keep trying to select more and more for that. That's a great thing about doing it with a stud. Now We've got all that data in front of us and we can make good quick gains in that sort of a thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think we'd have to say that since 2018 and we've been out there a few times and the change in the shape and the change in the data is pretty rapid at the moment, which is really really good to see it's going to be, I think, we fast forward another few more years and it's going to be really interesting how the sheep start to evolve into that. Obviously, most of them have come from a similar environment, but I guess a real focus on data now means that there's not much, not many things slipping through the gaps. We've got good women accounts and good data on everything, so we're not missing anything. Well, that's the aim anyway.
Speaker 2:That's the aim. Yeah, that's right and there's a lot to that as well. So we did. We want to try and keep that pressure, that selection pressure, on the sheep. So I think, if anything, we're probably running them worse now than we did when they were commercial sheep.
Speaker 2:So they're all in one mob pretty much all year. There's just five weeks they get pulled out to the single side, joined and then five weeks again over lambing time. The rest of the year the sheep run just on grass, all in one big mob so they go compete with each other for survival and I think that's very important. I mean, there's a lot of talk around regen grazing and that's relying a lot. The one of the big principles there is having sheep or all animals all together in just one or two big herds or mobs so you can move them around, get the good rest you need for your land and also get the animal impact on the land. So we need to be breeding a sheep that can fit into that system where they can compete with their buddies beside them for that bit of grass.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's it and obviously very important that Rams or stud use are raised. If we're going to, there's lots of people moving towards farming that way or have done for a long time, and definitely stocking rates are major drivers. So sheep competing with each other is always going to be something of value and obviously doing it at stud level means you can find those sheep that can do it. What are the sort of combination of traits that if you could sort of write down your perfect ram, what would he look like today?
Speaker 2:Well he'd come through. He'd be structurally sound, I'd say he'd be standing up well on his feet. He would have a good deep body and good width across him and not be a big, tall, lanky thing, and he'd have some really soft, bright white and good character wool. That's what we look for visually Underneath the hood he's got to have really low, ideally minus 60 or 70 worm account. We're trying to keep it a bit finer here. So we're after sort of minus one to minus two or three, even fiber diameter.
Speaker 2:We want to chase a little bit of fleece weight, but we don't want to go crazy on that because it's going to kill your fertility if you do it too much. So probably after that high sort of teens in the fleece weight and then we want a good growth curve. So I don't want a sheep that's massive when it gets older, but I want one that grows really quickly early. So chasing high weaning weight, post weaning weight and balancing that against not getting too high an adult weight, and that's also and that whole going for a stocking rate over individual animal performance is a bit tricky, because then you can have an high adult weight sheep Just because she's in good condition all the time. So you also got to bounce all that with condition score as well.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, there's, there needs to be some more research or more something to come around that maternal well, I guess the maternal efficiency I think podcast guest recently spoke about to work out just how we balance all of those traits effectively. And then, yeah, back on the wall. We want really low wall color so you can keep that bright white without going, without getting fleece wrought or fly strike. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's a good. Sounds like a nice shape yeah.
Speaker 2:And I want one thing. I forgot fertility, of course. So I mean that's that's probably your biggest driver, really. In a lot of ways I like spoke to a client the other day and he's like well, I love my wall and it's great. We get a bit of money off it. That's really good. But at the end of the day, lambs on the grounds, what drives his money, drives his profit and particularly with running big bobs, I think the you raising ability figure is probably very important. So you want lambs on the ground and you, but you want them to stay alive. You want that mother to be able to look after them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the beautiful thing about everything you've mentioned is that everyone's got a breeding value and we can sort of do it in a measured way rather than in a in a guessing way or we can actually we know what they're doing, particularly now that you've got after your sort of stewardship. You got good depth of pedigree and genomics where you haven't and measured for all those traits. So it starts getting pretty exciting once you get breeding values on those and on those traits, rather than kind of looking at the wool and going, oh it looks white because it's currently in any winter or whatever, but the pretty way it doesn't lie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, and they do change so much visually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I guess yeah, I mean a lot of your clients can be in further north into a serious sort of pastoral country, so that I guess that conditions you mentioned through fat and muscle is a combination of traits that sort of been a priority in that in your shek top.
Speaker 2:Yeah that's right. Yeah, we've been well. We went and bought heap of semen from different places last year to join and the primary goal behind that was that fat and muscle and we've I think we've achieved that. We've got sheep that just, yeah, they are really blooming even under poorer conditions. That was pretty dry summer this year but yeah, they've just been blooming and doing really well because of that.
Speaker 2:As you say, that fat and muscle, you want to sheep, we want to sheep. That doesn't have to take much work. I suppose Our tagline sheep that work for you, not make work for you and one of the things that makes a lot of work is having to feed sheep. So, living in seasonal conditions, and especially when you go north, where a fair bit of our client base started from, and they are only getting rain for four or five months of a year and then it's dry for the next seven or eight so those sheep need to be able to lay down that energy stores on their back in fat and muscle to carry them through that, yeah, that dry, that drought that they experience basically every year. Yeah, there's no point having high maintenance animals go up there and then feeding them for six months of the year.
Speaker 1:That's nobody's best plan yeah, and it comes back to that comment around lambs being important as well. Even in that country where you know, I guess they probably traditionally haven't thought too much about reproduction. But when you do take sheep that are able to handle the conditions and have lambs, it does change those production systems and you're still getting that valuable wool off of the back, but you're doing it with with a proper other income stream. So it's. I mean, I think obviously we're not when we're recording this, we're not in a time of boom across any industry. We're all in terms of prices received and stuff. But having that dual income whether it's whether it's meat on your wool shape or wool on your meat shape, that's definitely in these years. It's where those decent, those two income sources is is got, even though individually they're not as high as anyone would like them to be. But but at least there's two of them rather than one and that's right in that particular circumstance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly right. And I mean up north, people breeding the right style of sheep, they can get good laying percentages. There's a there's a bit of perception from some people in industry that you can't do it. That 70% is just what we got to accept. But yeah, we've all our clients up there the Waffa Bogan too, recently they're getting got over 100%. Granted, they had a good season this last year but they got over 100%. One of them says he doesn't see any reason he can't stick it 120, 125% long term. And there's another bloke up there. He's only bought a couple of our Rams but he's breeding this style of sheep and he got I think was a 90% and new lambs up in North Queensland area out near Longreach. So it's doable.
Speaker 1:You just got to breed the right style of sheep yeah, yeah and I think, yeah, that mindset thing is is massive and so many quotes you could quote there. But yeah, whether you think you can or you can't, you'll be right that those sort of quotes come to mind. And yeah and yeah, the and I think we have as an industry we kind of slipped into letting the, letting what we saw or in good conditions, sort of dictate what a good sheep is, and then and then wonder why they didn't work when we throw them out into much less favorable conditions, whereas now we've got ram breaders like yourselves that are willing to actually put the sheep under commercial pressure and in a ram breeding flock, which means we're breeding sheep that can then go forward and hand a quick interruption here to remind you of head shepherd premium and our consulting services at next in Agri International. If you love this podcast and want to hear more of them, visit the hubnextinagricom and sign up for head shepherd premium and get an extra podcast each week.
Speaker 1:If you're listening to this and thinking you really do want to maximize the genetic gain of your lifestyle and feel more confident around the decisions you're making on farm, then send me an email at mark at nextinagricom and we'll get in touch and see, see where that takes us. I guess one thing we sort of we've probably assumed in our chat but we haven't talked about is is that your sheep are obviously extremely low wrinkle, so there's no which helps, yeah, across a range of those traits. That's right.
Speaker 2:So yeah, easy to shear, of course, don't have to bother mulesing and that's. I can't believe that mulesing still isn't banned. Someone's been doing some very good sweet talking to keep that going and yeah, I mean we've got such a problem. The biggest problem I see at the moment in the industry well too, I suppose one is that traditional thinking I'll get back to that but the other is shearing. And one thing I can't fix is shearers.
Speaker 2:I can help with a lot of things with a sheep to make it less, less work, but you still got to shear them at the end of the day. But at least if you've got a plain, aborted sheep, they're going to be and the shears can do a hundred and twenty, thirty, forty in a day. They're going to be coming to you first rather than rather than anyone else. And, yeah, just well, ease of management. As I said, no flies, no flies, right. No jetting, no mulesing. Yeah, the other day we've sent out a surplus U-lams off to a bloke and filling out the health declaration. So, as a section C on the form which is for health treatments, and I don't know if it's a fault, but on the ENVD, the online version, you can't fill out anything older than six months ago, and so I sent this form off and the guy says you didn't fill out your section C and I said well, we haven't actually done anything with them for nine months. We drenched them at weaning, we gave them the booster vaccination and that's all we done with them.
Speaker 1:So it's yeah it's good, yeah, and that's good. And the more I guess, the further the breeding goes, the better that becomes, which is, which is pretty exciting, and I guess yeah, I mean, I keep wanting people to have the visual in the head of your property.
Speaker 1:Guess, I've been there a few times in the last few years and like I remember once not being gonna get the sleep because the frogs are so loud so much water around and that's in the last couple years, and then back there the other day and there's sort of out for a run, there's dust and and look, looking quite dry, and I guess that is Australia generally, but I think up there it's the extremes are more extreme and and yeah, I think it's such a perfect environment to breed sheep in, really, because it's not ever gonna be easy. That's gonna be too wet or too dry. This, yeah, I don't imagine there's not too many wakes where you're not wishing it stopped raining or started raining seems to be, seems to be one or the other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's certainly some people you talk to. I try to be a bit more positive than that, but there's certainly some people you talk to. It's always either or not. Yeah, either we need another inch or, gee, we should stop raining. Yeah, as you say, we've gone to me well bed. Nobody around here expected 2018-2019 to last even half as long as it did, so we made a few mistakes with our grazing, so we went from bare dirt and dust storms every week, or twice a week sometimes, to buffal grass growing above our fence. Now back to their heap of dry standing feed. That's hard to manage as well.
Speaker 1:So I read your blog every whenever that comes out, and people can find that on your website or Facebook.
Speaker 2:So we do a weekly Facebook update just about what we do and we're just starting a blog that will be a monthly blog on the website yeah great and it's always good to see what you're up to A fair bit of it seems like water lines and fencing, so you're obviously still subdividing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we're trying to be better with our grazing. Don't want to end up like we did in 2019 again. So we've got our best bigger paddocks and been splitting them up, getting good water around so that we can yeah, well, the aim is to run everything in just a couple mobs altogether. Outside of that joining and lambing, guarding windows and, yeah, give good grass periods, get good annual impact on the land and try to have an environment that is more resilient. So we want sheep that are more resilient, but we also want a landscape that's more resilient too, and even now it hasn't rained for three months, four months, and the paddocks which we just subdivided and grazed pretty well, I think they're trying to regrow now. So there's obviously moisture down there and it's slow because it hasn't had any fresh moisture for a long time, but it's coming back and, yeah, that's really great to see that everyone else is complaining around you and we've got green grass still coming back behind us. So, yeah, that's good to see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's nice to get some of those early indicators that the workers is worth it, and it's been nice to see this sheep responding to your selection and the paddocks responding to their management. So it's a couple of early winds. It's always good to keep us entertained and it's not always easy doing things differently and if you don't see something positive from it.
Speaker 2:That's right, but it's great too to have a bit of a network around you. Our local Gisby Landcare Group, macagg Alliance, are very active, and a heap of younger folk, 30s and 40s. We're heavily involved in that, and so that's really good to have an encouraging network of people around you as well. So yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a key to it, for sure. It's pretty tough doing things alone, I guess. Up there are the challenges. Last time I was there, you were getting geared up to baits and pigs. Obviously, there's no one. I don't think you've been if Wild Dog's got down to you, or is it just pigs? The main predator?
Speaker 2:Pigs and foxes are the main thing around here. We've been lucky with dogs so far. There's a forestry and the 20, what would it be? 40k from us and there's dogs up there. So we've got half our property exclusion fence, which should be a bit of future proofing, I suppose, but no dogs at the moment. Thankfully, Pigs and foxes we bait, for we shoot pigs, that's fun and bait foxes every year before lambing time.
Speaker 1:Is it planned to exclusion fence the whole place, or is it not possible?
Speaker 2:No, that would be, but it's not a high priority. But, as I said, we've got half the property done, so if Wild Dogs do end up getting encroaching on us, we'll whip the other half up as soon as we can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, whip it up at whatever. It is 6 or 8k hectic there. Is it a kilometer or something? That would be a cheap fence at the moment.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, I think you've got to double bait, at least till now.
Speaker 1:Yeah right, I don't want to whip it up too soon then.
Speaker 2:No, but as fences need replacing, it would be still not to replace them with exclusion fence.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, fair enough. So yeah, I guess going forward it's more of the same. Just hone in on those traits that you mentioned and sort of fast forward 5 or 10 years and see where the sheep end up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the hope. There's always other things, I suppose, at the back of your mind, like is tail docking going to be a thing as well in the future? But yeah, for now we've got plenty of other stuff to work on. I mean, all those traits I mentioned, there's probably 10 or 12 and you've got to try and balance all of them and the one sheep, and that's an interesting, that's a challenging mental puzzle, which is why I enjoy it so much, I think, yeah, it's always good to try and figure all that out. But the other thing I'm really keen is just to see the marina industry move forwards.
Speaker 2:The wool is such a great fibre. I don't know how did you talk about it earlier in the year on your podcast about how you love running in wool, and I'm slowly, as all my older clothes get replaced and slowly replacing everything with wool too, because it is such a beautiful fibre to wear and obviously it's a beautiful fibre to look at. There's so many good things to it. But yeah, I worry about the industry as a whole. There's certainly some great people coming to the forefront now, but I was up at Barcauldon for their big ag field day they hold every three years called West Tech up there recently. It's so obvious up there. We're up there beside a couple of the traditionally minded studs and everyone visiting them is in their 60s and 70s, whereas just across from us there's a heap of Dorp, of Rinozzi white studs and everyone visiting there is in their 20s and 30s, like where it's so clear to us where the foot traffic is going.
Speaker 2:In the industry there's been this perception that sheep are hard work and they just have to be hard work. And that keeps getting pushed by these studs next to us. They chat with some of them and they just though their mindset is sheep are hard work, so what are their clients going to expect? Like there's one bloke we had over the border here. He'd been taken from one stud. He'd complained about the sheep, saying surely 70% lambing is not good enough, surely we can do better than that. So his agent took him to another stud with the same style of sheep, same problems.
Speaker 2:Third stud, same style of sheep, same problems. What's the bloke going to think? But there aren't any better sheep out there. So that sort of thing just bugs me. When we do the style of sheep that can get 120%, 30%, 40%, we think anything under 130 is a terrible year, and that's including maidens. So yeah, the perception in the industry that sheep have to be hard work needs to be changed, because otherwise you're not going to have anyone in the marina industry. No one my age wants to do that. That's just seems silly. I wouldn't be doing that if I had grown up in my dad's years. I don't know why he stuck with it.
Speaker 2:To be honest, drenching on the clock every six weeks and jetting at times every four or five weeks. I don't know why you kept with it. I guess wool prices were really good, but it's so much that you don't need to do. And yeah, they'd have an argument, I guess, if this style of sheep didn't exist. But there's lots of people now starting to breed this style of sheep and that don't need mules and that don't need, yeah, mollycodling to keep them alive. But the industry is the wider industry still has that perception. I talked to a couple of cattle blokes up there. They all grew up with their family having sheep, but they took over, got rid of the sheep and nothing will convince them to go back to sheep because they've been turned off for life. And so, yeah, that's really sad. And so, yeah, try to get that, get this information out there. I mean, you guys, like you've been trying for decades. It's just so like an uphill battle somehow. I don't know why.
Speaker 1:Yeah, on the bad days it seems frustrating, but then on the good days, you see those individual people that we see change and go ahead and just all of a sudden start and see some young people who just get into it and walk into it. So, yeah, you're right, it's insanely frustrating, but just because of the range, like you said, the range that exists between the best and the rest, or the best and the worst I suppose it's if it was a three or four percent difference or something we wouldn't have anything to talk about we're talking fundamental shifts in your farming operation. It's a massive change in how much work is required and therefore how much you enjoy your life. And like, no one yeah, as you say, no young people.
Speaker 1:Well, I guess chemicals have got less effective and, yeah, people aren't just going to work because, like, because there's other alternatives that can change people. They can have cattle, dominant operations or they can do other things with their land or whatever. And if we continue to breed a sheep that's really, really hard to farm, then we can't be expected to People to farm. And I used to stand up in my more confronting days and stand up in front of stuff and I'd say, well, I don't know what it is, and so don't blame the sheep you bred them.
Speaker 1:But I do think that I do think that's true. We have a lot of people moving out of sheep because they won't yeah, they're hard worker, whatever but they've spent often decades breeding them in that way, without looking at Wormat Count, without looking at DAG and the Southern Environments, without looking at wool color and get what you select for, yeah, without getting on my soapbox again. But, yeah, that's definitely a lot of opportunity, I suppose, and, yeah, I guess that and that to me is a good thing, but there's always a concern if we get down to critical mass. And then, yeah, less numbers equals less levees, equals less research, equals like, the spiral that you end up going down is not ideal.
Speaker 1:No, it's better when things are spiraling upwards and there's a lot of buoyancy, and that's obviously what the industry we all want to be part of, exactly, yeah, and I guess yeah, and to me it doesn't matter whether you're breeding cattle, goats or sheep. You should be doing it with a future in mind and thinking about the traits that are going to keep people on farm and are going to fit in with consumer expectations and our own expectations of what's now acceptable in terms of husbandry and chemical use and all those other things that none of us really want to be playing around with, even chemicals if we don't have to, and minimizing all those, while everyone's willing to do the stuff to keep their sheep healthy, but if we can. The impact of genetics is huge, and I mean we've worked pretty hard on feed at Ris Marino as well, and that's another combination of traits and we can kind of some people are happy to trim feet for their lifetimes and other people just get on with breeding those for good feet.
Speaker 2:And I think that's where it comes back to what you said before. Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you'll be right, because mindset plays massively into that. If you don't think sheep can survive without a trench, without a foot trim, you're not going to try to fix it. But if you do think that this is a stupid waste of time, like I do, then you're going to do something to fix it and there are ways to do to fix that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and luckily it all comes back to the numbers and well, combination numbers and stock person ship stockmanship, yeah, and we have such power now at our hands that we just it would be crazy not to use it's always to be good in front of your class and screen with all those million colours coming up with different percentiles and looking at all those numbers. And it's nice to see the likes of 721 at 721, yeah, 791. 791, sorry, yeah, where you see some of those combinations of traits come together and it's pretty. It's good that it's in a shape, that's got a really good temperament and good feet. Yeah, that's right, but it is. Yeah, you start to see those animals come together, which is pretty exciting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very exciting, especially one like him, and because he is the most beautiful temperament animal too. He's easy to love and it just helps that he's got great data too. Yeah, he is indeed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was actually in a meeting on Friday where someone said you can't have a minus three, that's all. The lowest minus three is for micron, plus 0.2 for wrinkle. So I was kind enough to share his breeding days with them. But yeah, and that's the beauty of the data is, you'll find these freaks that sit out there in a different quadrant than the rest of the and you don't. There's not many of them, but there'll be. Lots of them will have existed in history that will have just lived their life without ever being known because no one had the data on them. And that's the. I guess that's the most exciting thing to me.
Speaker 1:Is these people that sort of don't want to embrace technology? I guess that it's not. That it's not the numbers make them a good sheep. It's the numbers that prove they're a good sheep, or find a good sheep, find the good sheep, find the good sheep. That's history. That would mean years and years, yeah, yeah, and then multiply them, which is the power we've got now. But anyway, we can talk that line for days, but we've listened to this market to give out chat, so we'll let you get out there and do some fencing. What's on today?
Speaker 2:Probably cutting up some sheep today. Actually they're ready for sale. In a couple of days you get some lamb in the freezer and on the barbecue ready for sale day.
Speaker 1:Excellent. We'll do all the best for that and we'll look forward to getting up there sometime soon. But yeah, all the best sale. Thanks very much for the chat. It's always good to have you on and chat shape.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Obviously, that's what we're all passionate about here. Sheep, sorry, all your cattle breeders out there, that's right.
Speaker 1:They've had a fair run lately. We've given them plenty of material. Yeah, that's true. Cheers, mate. Thanks very much, mark, good to chat. Thanks again to our mates at Heinegger, who are proud world leaders in the manufacturing and supply professional sheep shearing and clipping equipment. They understand that their customers rely on the quality and performance of their products each and every day. Also, thanks to our friends at MSD Animal Health and Orphlex, they offer an extensive livestock portfolio focused on animal health and management, all backed up by exceptional service. Both of these companies are wonderful supporters of the Australian and New Zealand livestock industries and we thank them for sponsoring the HHP podcast.
