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
Ontario Sheep Farming: Insights from Dr Mark Ferguson
Sophie and Ferg catch up about Ferg’s recent trip to Ontario, Canada, where he visited 14 different sheep farming enterprises on his 10-day trip with Ontario Sheep Farmers.
Highlights:
- The differences in production systems, compared with New Zealand and Australia
- Feeding strategies
- Lambing systems
- Health challenges
- Market dynamics
- The potential for genetic improvements in sheep breeding
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Welcome to the Head Shepherd Podcast. I'm your host, mark Ferguson, ceo here at NextGen Agri International, where we help livestock managers get the best out of their stock Before we get started. Thank you to our two fantastic sponsors for continuing to sponsor this podcast. Msd Animal Health is perhaps better known as Cooper's Animal Health in Australia and for their AllFlex range across the world with a comprehensive suite of animal health and management products. Heinegger is a one-stop shop for wool harvesting and animal fibre removal. The Heinegger team have a deep understanding of livestock agriculture, backed by Swiss engineering and a family business dedicated to manufacturing the best. We are grateful to our sponsors for their support, helping us bring Head Shepherd to you each week, and now it's time to get on with this week's episode.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to Head Shepherd. This week we thought we'd actually have a chat about my trip to Ontario. Sophie and I were having a bit of a yarn about it and we thought, well, we might as well press record and let the listeners listen along as well. So Sophie and I are sitting with a Mike H chatting about Ontario. Yeah, I was there for 10 or 11 days, put plenty of socials up so anyone that was following would have seen plenty of images and stuff, but yeah, it was a great experience. I was there at a great time of the year in terms of autumn, leaves and all that stuff to look at and yeah, I guess probably on reflection, like very different environment, very different production systems. But I don't know when you're sitting around in a hotel room as the clock strikes 12 and it's just the same as you, as if you're in australia or new zealand great people that farm sheep all over the world, it seems yeah, it's the joy of it.
Speaker 2:Really, like I, I spent a short time in canada and they're as close to kiwis as you're going to get.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, but I thought we'll start with the start and why you were invited over, um, and who invited you over so the interior sheep farmers, I guess an advocacy group or they're sort of, yeah, an industry group that are tasked with sort of promoting the industry and helping those within it across Ontario. So Anita O'Brien actually is a listener, hopefully she's listening along today. She was the one that suggested to Erin Morgan, who's the Executive Director at Ontario Sheep Farmers, to look me up, and so, yeah, I guess there was a couple of jobs. One was to critique three different businesses, their sort of breeding strategies, which is always a bit, I guess, confronting in front of 150 people talking about someone else's business. But I guess that's kind of what we do, so that's, that's fine. Um, and then and then a presentation as well, a keynote on uh profitability and sheep.
Speaker 1:I also spoke to the large flock operators group the morning before that uh, which was a group of I think they're cut off as 650 maybe sheep, and so, yeah, a lot of those are actually grazing outdoors, whereas a lot of others are also indoors and outdoors people in that group. But, yeah, I guess they're the more uh, the more that are primarily doing doing sheep production without other parts, that will have other parts of business as well, but but are genuine, genuinely producing sheep as for profit, whereas and then that goes across the group is a range from those with a small number of sheep through to those that have a combination of other incomes. I guess, like lots of places in australia, new zealand, where, where sheep don't pay all the bills, um, yeah, so they were the, they were the kind of core things to do. But to do that, um had the great opportunity to to jump the car. I went to 14 different farms, so erin was kindly chauffeured me around and, uh, yeah, so literally got off the plane at 10 30 at night after the longest thursday of my life, and then, I think, seven o'clock that next morning we're off and spent, yeah, ended up on two islands that first day, so, uh, which was pretty cool.
Speaker 1:So the first one was, yeah, like a boat to a boat out to see the sheep, and the second one a ferry out to see the sheep. But, um, yeah, so, and we went from there pretty much it was pretty similar to a next-gen trip. There wasn't a lot of time, downtime, it was getting the car and go and um, which was, which is good, like we like to get a lot done in a day I suppose we can.
Speaker 2:We can either run, you know, a quick farm by farm or breed by breed. I mean, you saw so much like it's, you had people in farms, you saw milking sheep, suffolks, boats to sheep, sheep grazing crop corn, it's yeah yeah, I guess the.
Speaker 1:What I'm amazed by was the, the number of ways you can do corn so this, so everyone, there's like I don't know eight different ways you can feed corn. So obviously corn grain, and then there's corn cob silage. That's where they take harvest, just the corn cob, and then grind the entire, just the cob, into a, so it's got the moisture, obviously before it's dried, and then ensile that, and so that's quite a good feed, quite a good balance feed. There's obviously corn silage or whole, whole crop silage that we'd be used to, and then sort of two versions of that, one more grain than the other, and then distillers grain, which is corn, with the obviously starch removed through distillation, um, and so that's actually high protein, I guess it's sort of 22 protein and quite good fat. So it's quite a good creep feed and really good lamb tucker, uh.
Speaker 1:And then what else we got? Um, yeah, then we saw a couple people grazing whole, whole crop corn. So you sort of start off before the, before the cob was fully formed, and so they're sort of grazing I guess. I guess like a whole, like our normal sort of break free gazing. You're grazing, you're doing in new zealand, and then by the end of it, as the corn's maturing, they're only eating the cob. And yeah, I've never seen sheep demolish something so quickly as jumping in a crop of whole, whole corn and and they know they've got to push it down to get to the, to get to the cob.
Speaker 1:So, um, that was pretty interesting, but I guess that's more normal how we would handle, uh, how we would feed off forages, I suppose. But yeah, definitely, obviously, land is at a premium, expensive land often and yeah, cash cropping so soybeans and corn being for ethanol production as well as stock feeds has pressure on grazing, we saw. But then there's a few people who are pasture-based and yeah, I guess one of the. You kind of think, oh, it's going to be similar to NZ, but a lot of these areas go from sort of minus 30 winters through to kind of plus 30 in humid summers and so pasture growth goes from zero for a long period of time to like 200 kilos a day. So, like the ability to stock to that, to have enough animals to eat, yeah, to get through the winter but then be able to eat that amount of feed is obviously impossible. So, yeah, it's quite a challenge to handle that.
Speaker 2:I can't gauge on how cold, because you were saying that you know you were getting a boat out to these sheep on lakes and in winter the lakes just froze up entirely.
Speaker 1:You could walk over them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah lakes, and in winter the lakes just froze up entirely. You could walk over them, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So you know queenstown or you know tequipa froze, yeah yeah, yeah, exactly, and they're like these lakes, uh, like these are the great lakes, these are enormous and those things can freeze completely which just blows my mind, or not completely, I suppose the top freeze enough to be able to drive on um for big chunks of it, and that yeah, so, yeah. So the first um island we went to, which was matt and liz's um, and I don't know if they own all the island, but a big chunk of it anyway. The uh, yeah, so they, yeah, obviously boat over in the summer, but then can four-wheeler, like you can drive on top of it over there in the winter, but which has some bonuses. But he talked about how, like sometimes, if it's not quite, if it's sort of starting to melt, you can kind of see a bit of a wave forming in the ice as you're driving in the four-wheeler, and I don't think that's something I'd want to see. That's not something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah and so do they have sheep outside in this, like, are they all out, some of them outside in winter?
Speaker 1:yeah, so that's uh, so that's, I guess, ice, and they're feeding on top of snow.
Speaker 2:Basically, yeah, so um and feeding out those silages they're making silage and yeah, that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1:So yeah, um, so that's a small number that yeah, would feed through well, through the winter, um, but yeah, basically I guess more like a kiwi winter, but minus 25 degrees or minus or further 30 degrees cooler, but yeah, feeding some of those high-energy corn and stuff to keep things ticking over, a lot of yeah, like it seems insane, but they seem to be able to do it and then get them out onto the pasture as it starts to, as you start to thaw out and things start to grow.
Speaker 2:I know that there's quite a few Canadians that do sort of accelerated lambing and whatnot like production-wise. How comparable was it to here?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so your pasture-based folks are more single, like one lambing, and then as you go into intensive like a lot of farms that sheep don't go outside at all or sort of go out into yards close to outside yards but not too far away. The they're then into accelerated systems. So, um, quite high for country levels, so lots of. So they are the reto arcot, which is a canadian developed breed which has got fin and frisian and random stuff in there, but yeah, I guess selected for for high for candy, lots of multiples. Um, so some of those doing kind of three lambs per year, like 300 lambing and then we'll, and then obviously the fall lambing, which is, yeah, so the spring lambing they do that and then the fall lambing is is a bit less as you get the photo period working against you.
Speaker 1:Um, but they'll be, yeah, sort sort of accelerated, like some on the five-star system, some on other variations of. Yeah, just kind of always thinking like some of them lamb five, six times a year, obviously not the same sheep, but yeah, so it's kind of, yeah, it's all intense I guess when, which is sort of, yeah, it's obviously hard to work out in your head how that all works, but I guess, once you're in, once you've got a sheep and you're going to feed it everything it needs, it may as well either be pregnant or lactating is kind of the theory. How old?
Speaker 2:are they weaning over?
Speaker 1:there Quite early. So more 50, 60 days, yeah, like 50 days, I think, is probably. I don't know what the average was, to be honest, but yeah, but certainly when they're young, like they do, particularly those indoor systems will have like a creep available from a couple of weeks old and so the animals are already kind of undergrown and then weaned and then stuck again obviously just bore further corn into them. So, yeah, quite fast growth for the genetics probably aren't super growthy, from what I can work out through a few size of venues and looking up their data, but probably comparable to New Zealand but not comparable to Australian sort of terminals and yeah, but still getting some really good growth rates through, yeah, concentrated feeding.
Speaker 1:Obviously Big issues with worms. There's not a lot of actives available. Yeah, I guess what I quickly realised is how many things that we have that they don't have, like through veterinary products, drenches, vaccinations, a range of things, and kind of stopped, started off sort of commenting about, oh, it'd be better if you had this and this and this, but quickly realised that that's not very helpful to people to tell them the stuff that they can't have because of, obviously, market size. People aren't willing to go through the approvals process for small markets like your. Big corporations need to sell stuff.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, a lot of which is a bit limiting, but I think, yeah, I guess what I took away from that is that genetics is going to be sort of number one, two and three on the solutions list for a lot of their problems, because if you don't have the chemicals or the vaccinations or whatever, then you're going to have to select for the resistant ones. So barber's pole big battle in those. Yeah, so anyone grazing outdoors obviously can get a fair load up of larvae and then that obviously, without appropriate treatments, can cause a fair bit of grief. Coccidia are the other parasitic problem and getting outbreaks in barns was like one of the, I think, probably saying coccidia out loud amongst an Ontario sheep farmer, putting a shiver down their spine. I think that's probably their number one concern and I was there in kind of yeah in fall autumn and a really good week 16, 17 degrees and blue sky, lovely, and everyone was telling me how lucky I was.
Speaker 1:At the time it was actually snowing back in New Zealand which was yeah, both out of season, you can imagine that some of those barns get quite cold and humid and wet and damp and imagine that there's some health. Well, there are some health issues associated with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so to finish, we'll finish that production and then we'll talk about genetics. So how heavy are they finishing them? What money are they getting from the lambs over there?
Speaker 1:uh, so yeah, out to 110 pounds. So I had to do the 2.2 conversion, um, flat out all the time. So sort of a 25 kilo carcass, uh, was, is the sort of aim for most people, some a few a bit lighter. The one the one processor that presented at the convention was I think they sort of capped it at 27. You wouldn't get paid any more over 27 kilos. Yeah, so fast growth or pushed to that.
Speaker 1:Some sold direct, a lot sold through what they call sale barns, so sale yards and all entire some males with tails on. But yeah, no, yeah, no males. Well, not many males castrated, which I'll talk about before the podcast is out, and yeah, so that most people were sort of no real, I guess not the structure that you've got here. So not much, not many, not that great availability, just sell store lambs or whatever, like a lot. Most people are finishing some of the pasture guys were, um, were had a sort of custom feeders that were taken from from them, but a lot of people were sort of taking everything through to to finish product just on the scale of things and I mean the price.
Speaker 1:I think it's, um, yeah, kind of depending on. Obviously it fluctuates a bit, but they're kind of over 10 bucks a kilo canadian, so probably more like 12, so 300, like a 25 dealer, 25 kilo carcass making sort of 300 canadian which is whatever, that is 363, 73, 80 or something. So plenty of um. So yeah, high, high value lamb um. So I guess that kind of explains how you can go intensive if you're getting that sort of price. Even mutton was like. There wasn't much depreciation on mutton, they were getting that similar sort of money or even better.
Speaker 2:Their import costs obviously considerably higher with the barns and stuff Even. Still, that's a nice pretty penny.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think it. I mean I don't. Yeah, there's not. Yeah, I think it. Obviously the combination of the feeding and that price meant that probably, yeah, profitability probably ends up being similar to what we are Not sure.
Speaker 1:Obviously didn't get into that level of detail. But the other thing I just want to mention on production is quite a few grazing under solar panels. So Chris Moore, lindsay Smith and a few others we caught up with were grazing under solar panels. So Chris Moore, lindsay Smith and a few others we caught up with were grazing under solar panels. So in that model you get paid for taking the grass away and obviously the sheep are a bit of a bonus. Sounds like a perfect model.
Speaker 1:There is challenges with that because you've got to obviously break fence through panels and shift stuff around panels and there's no water on a lot of those panels areas and stuff. So kind of a fair bit of work. Well, there's no water on a lot of those panels areas and stuff, so kind of a fair bit of work. Well, there is a lot of work but you get the benefit of, I guess, well paid to graze it as well. But I think that's going to be a big opportunity across most of our production areas, like for those areas where panels are going in, there's a lot of pasture underneath the panels and, yeah, the big production challenge was coyotes or coyotes depending on which person you ask because those things, yeah, will kill any class of stock and everything. Yeah, the challenge with grazing outside is both the winter, but more often is the dogs or the coyotes.
Speaker 2:sorry, oh thanks, museums seem so easy.
Speaker 1:One thing I did probably challenge a bit and have since, in my head at least, is how many rams went out. There's lots of, because people have rams. I kind of put them all out across ewes and yeah, I think yeah, there's definitely over-ram use, as in lots like down to probably I don't know one ram per 20 ewes often, and I mean they're all in close proximity. We know that a ram in New Zealand will get 100, 120 ewes on a hill, let alone in a yard where they can see everyone. So yeah, I think the kind of concept was that a RAM can only handle a few years a day, like two or three years a day, whereas we know that's higher than that.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and I think everyone's going oh, it doesn't matter, we've got the RAMs anyway. But the genetic merit of all those RAMs isn't equal. So if you've only used the top three rather than the top 15, it means your genetic gain, like your selection intensity, goes up, your average genetic merit goes up and your selection genetic gain should go up. So yeah, I think there's a definite scope there to reduce the number of rams used and sort of that. I mean I think there's a bit of an excuse that you just chuck them all in, because then you don't have to worry about feeding that rampant at the moment because they're all in the use. But but I think, but I think, I think that, um, yeah, I reckon there'll be some lost, lost opportunity there so we'll get on to genetics.
Speaker 2:I guess that's what we're all here for. You saw quite a few sheep breeds, if you've been following for social media.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I suppose what you observed, I guess, of how they're managing their genetics over there and the potential, I guess yeah, and I guess that I mean it's easier for me to comment on genetics than production because the production variation is like it's so different and I think they've got, yeah, like they have great sort of care around their nutrition and stuff. So I think that bit, there wasn't a lot to say. But yeah, genetics, I think there's still plenty of opportunity. I guess the breeding happened sort of in the 60s and 70s. They developed these couple of breeds like a Canadian Arcot and a Rideau Arcot and then the sort of.
Speaker 1:So the Dorset has been sort of well, they've selected more maternal Dorsets, I suppose, so lacking less carcass and more, yeah, I guess, more carcass than a Rideau, but generally less carcass than what some of the terminals we'd see getting around these days and a dorset that we would have as a terminal.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, sort of a maternal dorset. So a lot of people were um had a cross of dorsets and ritos, um like an f1 or a or a fixed composite with a few other breeds in there, um which I thought they were good shape, um, they were big shape, the. I think one of the challenges I think in their industry will be kind of how to balance that and the reto sort of is that like a small maternal with that's highly fecund and then hit it with a guy with a bigger terminal or whatever? But yes, I think there's, there's opportunity there to, I guess, maybe more efficient on some of that stuff. I think the big opportunities are around, like the selection for coccidia resistance it's. I found one paper that was correlated with worm resistance and so but no one, like no assist counting and stuff to work out, yeah, like there didn't seem to be.
Speaker 1:I don't know anyone in the world that's doing that. But I think that would be a game changer for that industry if we could find some um, some selection sort of processes. They do um, they have a, a pneumonia, progressive pneumonia, um problem which is caused by maddie visner, which is a virus, I assume. Um, and yeah, it's, it's a, a major problem for them. So you get and so and there is a gene test they've developed for um that's been developed for that, which I think, from what I can find is actually could be a bit effective. Like there's a couple of haplotypes that are very susceptible to that disease and some that are less so Scrapy. They do a lot of testing for, or some people do a lot of testing for, genetic resistance to scrapy. So a couple of gene tests which people are using to different levels, which have shown a bit of promise. And then, yeah, I guess, like most industries, there's sort of some people trying pretty hard to measure stuff and using Genovese, which is their genetic evaluation system. Probably one of the challenges was that Genovese doesn't have heaps of traits. You can imagine maybe Sill and Landplan 25 years ago or whatever, before, a lot of the traits were developed like sort of. Some of the core traits are there, but at the scale the industry is out, it's difficult to invest in all the different. Yeah, to develop new trades into those evaluation systems. But yeah, I think there's probably. Yeah, I mean the sort of comment was, if you go to 2,000 farms in Canada you'll find 2,000 different production systems, which is kind of true, but then kind of isn't there's sort of core similar things? I think around genetics there's a bit of haphazard stuff going on. I could use this round this year and this one next year. So I think, yeah, probably opportunity to tidy that up a little bit through. I'm a bit of a fan of maternal sort of composites and some of the ones I saw there, like some of the combination of Rideau and Dorset, but then it'd been and they'd put a bit of New Zealand composite in there as well and a bit of New Zealand Cootworth in different places. So yeah, I think there is opportunity in there to probably to make sure that the genetics are tailored for the system.
Speaker 1:I think obviously you need a different youth or a grazing system than you do for a barn system. I think I know I haven't done the modeling, but we need to do the modeling on how big mature size needs to be in those those systems. It seems to be a lot of people were sort of running everything the same, whereas I don't know. I feel like there's an opportunity for a small number at that for country. Like you can turn over a lot of ewe lamb, so I think there's an opportunity for a small number At Fecundity. You can turn over a lot of ewe lambs, so I think there's an opportunity to have a small number of maternals and then lots of animals going to terminals, which was something I was harping on a bit while I was there. But yeah, I think that would be interesting to see how that rolls. There's no preg scanning for multiples there. There's preg scanning but no one.
Speaker 1:I think the accuracy, from what I could tell, the accuracy wasn't sufficient with the people local people to get accurate singles and twins and that and a few people doing it themselves, that sort of stuff. So I don't know, I felt like that was a bit of a to me. Managing that level of energy and all that sort of stuff and not knowing who's a single, twin, triplet would be a, would be a severe challenge. Obviously not many singles in those highly for gun breeds, but but having twins and triplets and in the same group and then yeah, so I think I think that stuff was. Yeah, I couldn't really get my head around how you could manage energy appropriately with without, because I knew a lot of them were doing quite targeted breeding, like they're really good with their short matings and a lot of people using cedars in the off season and stuff. So they were probably really well. They definitely were good at sort of synchronising lambings and stuff. But then I feel like you get the full value out of that if you knew who was a twin, who was a triplet and a few things like that. But yeah, that would be. Yeah, there's plenty of things to reasons why that's hard. I suppose Like it's because of all those different lambings. Like your preg scan would be full time on the road and while it's not quite the expanse of Australia, there is still plenty of yeah, like plenty of area they would need to cover. So and and for small groups, which would make it fairly difficult to assault the economic. So you can kind of see what the where the challenges are coming from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the other thing I was keen to mention was probably probably at the convention we had lamb for the dinner and then the next day we had like a pulled lamb shoulder and, without sounding offensive, it's not the best lamb I've ever eaten and I kind of got well. I kind of, I guess, reminded me that perception is everything really Like for the canadian lamb eater. That was good lamb and was. It was very tender. Um, you could definitely taste I could taste anyway the ram taint and and it was quite fatty, being corn fed. So it was a very different kind of almost. If you didn't tell me it was lamb, I wouldn't have known what I was eating.
Speaker 1:Um, oh and definitely the pulled lamb shoulder was definitely because of the fat cooked into the meat. You could definitely taste the ram taint and which, yeah, it's not something that I enjoy, but obviously if you've grown up with that sweat taste then that's fine. And a lot of the market in Canada are cultural lamb eaters, so from the Middle East or subcontinent or whatever, and particularly Middle East, where often they want entire animals and that's what they're used to eating, so that you can kind of see why, that's how, how that that rolls. But it certainly was, yeah, a bit, yeah, a bit different and, uh, for me and and yeah, I guess I guess.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's um interesting. Just you get used to eating it in a particular way and tasting it in a particular way. But I would struggle to. Yeah, I can't imagine new lamb eaters who haven't eaten anything with rame taint, sort of tasting that and thinking it was amazing. But I don't know.
Speaker 2:Well, I grew up not farming and so whatever meat we got was probably cheap and I didn't like lamb growing up. I thought it tasted horrible. My sister still really didn't like lamb growing up. I thought it tasted horrible. My sister still really doesn't like it to this day and it's probably because we were eating rams. We weren't eating the best stuff and and even like saying that we we're gap rated here, which is a global animal partnership, which means we don't castrate our ram lambs and we send them over to america to go to whole foods. And I just tried to think who's trying lamb for the first time from whole foods, thinking they're buying a nice expensive cut of fancy new zealand meat and it's an eight month old ram.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you know the works are still taking offers and they want it, but as someone that picks a nice fat hogget, dry hogget with a long tail to eat, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think testosterone yeah, yeah, definitely, and yeah, and you kind of I mean there's intensive systems, probably 10 growth advantage from a ram versus weather, so you can kind of there's lots of reasons why you would do it, but I think, yeah and I guess that. So there's that, plus the corn fed versus grass fed, um, like I think the I mean a lot of australian lamb is is feedlocked finish, but it's been on, so it's a very pale mate, obviously very young mate um, because it's killed early. So anyway, just different um and very tender though like um, so no trouble there, like, but yeah, anyway, it's just. Yeah, it's just intriguing, uh definitely one more question.
Speaker 2:Well, no, not just one, but I should ask you what the last thing you changed your mind about was. Isn't that the end? But, um, you visited a sheep dairy and that's my thing, and yeah, just thoughts and opinions. You mentioned clean points and the breeding of them and the redos and stuff yeah, certainly, uh, clean, yes, clean, pointed shape.
Speaker 1:Vince and heather are also doing a great job of that on their, their redos as well. So heather does actually most that breeding. I think vince does all the feeding but uh, yeah, getting really made a lot of movement there. Um and yeah, so that was, that was interesting. But the um, yeah, the sheep dairy was was cool. So it's a sort of a relatively fledgling industry in canada.
Speaker 1:So, um, this is their form of co-op, uh, and they're doing, doing good things, have brought in the different people pronounce differently, but the corn or whatever, the french, french dairy genetics and, uh, which are clean points.
Speaker 1:And yeah, I reckon, I don't know, they're a nice-looking ewe, I reckon nice-looking rams, clean points, they don't need to do any teat spraying or anything or teat dipping because there's no wool around the teats or whatever.
Speaker 1:And yeah, just a really, really good-looking animal, obviously high performance, selected by the French for milk production. So, yeah, doing all barn fed and mated and getting long I don't know, like I haven't spent a lot of time in that industry, but getting quite long lactations and, um, I think sort of over a kilo a day right through for a long, for a long lactation which, sorry, later today, which I think some of the kiwi sort of versions I've heard here get down to quite low yields and lactation is not lasting that long, but obviously the corn would help with that. But, yeah, mating while still lactating, yeah, sort of all sorts of stuff that you need to do to keep things ticking over. Finishing all their, yeah, so, bringing all males and females through as lambs and then on to, obviously, to milk powder robots, and and then and then on to creep and go, and then on and then fed through the production production system.
Speaker 2:So, um, yeah, it was it's amazing how productive people can be when land value yeah, yeah, yeah you know when you've got to make it work, you get yeah, yeah, yeah and certainly, um, yeah, I think you can see that industry growing.
Speaker 1:Obviously, if there's, I mean, sheep milk products are awesome and yeah, so quite a few people are sort of starting to shift over to dairy rather than to meat production and yeah, so the one I went to, I think it was maybe 16 a side herringbone, yeah, rapid exit sort of platform, so yeah, and obviously a lot of dairies are inside as well over there. So we went past some pretty fancy looking dairy barns. We didn't go into any of them but did see an indoor beef feedlot, yeah, which some of the fattest cattle ever. Great, he was just grabbing, he was just trading, so he was just grabbing. He was just trading, so he was just grabbing. He was sort of grabbing whatever was available at the sale yards, almost like just stuff, and then bringing them through in groups and feeding them. So sort of an opportunistic feeder.
Speaker 1:But yeah, really really nice setup, a lot of focus on ventilation in those barns and making sure that the air movement is right, and so big fans and some fancy, fancy, fancy, fancy sort of computer systems which shut the shutters down on one side if it's running from that angle and wind's coming this way, and yeah, so like fully computerized and and high tech, some of those, some of those barns others were like the bank barns, which is your kind of traditional um, put a barn on the side of a hill and put the feet upstairs and the animals downstairs, so so they're. Quite I don't know if I'd want to spend too much of my life working in one of them. They were quite dark and shady. Yeah, so obviously people do what they need to do and obviously building a fancy half-million-dollar barn, is not, yeah, no, they make it work.
Speaker 2:It's impressive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I mean, yeah, just I guess the same as we encounter everywhere just great people doing great things and such a great opportunity to get to go in there and see those at that close level. And Erin Morgan deserves a special mention for putting the hard yards in, for getting me around everywhere, and Anita O'Brien, who was the instigator. And then there's a whole heap of crew and a whole heap of farmers that I met that were just an absolute pleasure. I got to go to my first ice hockey game, which was awesome. I had a fight, the local team won. The game is completely nuts like nothing else I've ever watched. But I got to enjoy that with Chris Moore and Lindsay Smith, which was a whole lot of fun as well, and Aaron, which was fantastic. But yeah, I mean, the highlight shouldn't be going to a hockey game, but it was certainly up there to see that first hand and just see how insane that game really is. So that was good fun.
Speaker 2:So we'll round it off by the question you ask everyone what was the last thing you changed your mind about?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I realize why I ask this question, because it's a really tough one to answer, and there's lots of, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I probably thought that it would be so foreign and so different. That kind of my experience would be less valuable there, I suppose. But I guess what it showed was that the similar challenges just sort of housed in different ways, I suppose, and I guess I didn't have any real feel for those systems and came away thinking yeah, and probably thought, oh well, like outdoors is the best way and whatever, but whereas indoors, done well, is really efficient and really like. It kind of made me think about which I didn't expect to be thinking about, but it kind of made me think about well, if and we actually had a client talk about this a while back like, if you can get cheap grain in Australia, why could you just put up a shed and do exactly the same thing? Like what's sort of stopping us doing that? Like when we spend a lot of our time and there'll be heaps of.
Speaker 1:I haven't done the economics and maybe you do need $350 a lamb to make it work, but certainly you kind of had this theory that people were just doing it because that's the way they'd already done it and hadn't thought about it.
Speaker 1:But it does make good sense if you've got a limited amount of land and you need to grow it, grow the maximum amount of feed on that and a maximum amount of energy and then feed it through a production system. I think, um, yeah, so probably it was challenged on on those sort of things. Um, probably went there with the concept that two lambs is always plenty, like triplets is never going to be useful, whereas probably came away going that there are people that can like under those systems. A lot of people take that weaker triplet off and feed it on a feeder, but a lot of those probably aren't taking those lambs right through on like. So a lot of people working on half a bag of milk powder per lamb and so that kind of improves the economics a fair bit rather than maybe a bag or whatever, depending.
Speaker 1:And so that kind of improves the economics a fair bit, rather than maybe a bag or whatever, depending on how long you leave them on there, but getting them on a creep quick and um, so, yeah, I guess. Yeah, probably my dislike for triplets and quads probably reduced a little bit, although, um, it's still is challenging, but they can triplets with creep.
Speaker 1:You can, you can do it yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's probably one thing, um, and then, yeah, probably, yeah, just a complete lack of appreciation for all of the like the importance of bedding and airflow and all that sort of stuff, like that whole new world.
Speaker 1:This is music to my heart yeah, like stuff that I've never, because we only ever like they're in a shearing shed to to get shawna gone again or whatever. Or I mean we have done I've had animals in doors for my studies and stuff before and like, yeah, so you see some of the same challenge. It was probably, um, I was probably also blown away, but you didn't see a lot of I don't know like behavioral. Like you know, you see zoo animals that are rocking back and forth because they're not meant to be locked up or whatever. And the same with when you put sheep in pens, they start chewing wool and being silly because they're not meant to be locked up or whatever. And the same with when you put sheep in pens, they start chewing wool and being silly because they're bored.
Speaker 1:But maybe it's a variation of feed or variation of system or the fact that I don't know, but you didn't seem to see many kind of behavioural issues or whatever where animals were just bored from being inside. Maybe that's because they were still in groups of 100 or whatever, or 50, 100, like they weren't individually penned or whatever. So, yeah, I don't know, like it's challenges what you think about. Like I guess that you think about the sort of animal welfare type angle and like freedom to display normal behavior which you kind of, they kind of were. Like they were, they were being sheep, they're in, they're warm in the house and the shed, not being chased by a coyote.
Speaker 2:So like it wasn't, it wasn't um, like I don't like welfare wise, I was tmr. Yeah, yeah, like the feed can keep sheep entertained. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:And so yeah, yeah, and they had very um, as people like courtney, um, who were doing great jobs of making sure the nutrition was right and the balance of fiber and energy and yeah, and I guess I mean most of them were either pregnant or lactating or whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that'll do it. That'll keep them off the diet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right, barefoot and pregnant, yeah, yeah. But I think, yeah, I don't know. So I mean, maybe I yeah, I probably went away, went, I don't know. I didn't know what to expect. But you kind of think, oh, this welfare-wise, putting stuff in a barn is not perfect, but I don't know. I didn't see any cases where you're like I didn't see any sheep. That didn't look happy.
Speaker 2:And yeah, so it was good. It's interesting to hear because, like for me, I don't have any of those. You know, I don't have that Kiwi-Australian thing to it and I know part of me would assume that you wouldn't either because of your trials and stuff. But yeah, it is something that Kiwis and Australians do struggle to wrap their head around until you see it in person and see why. And yeah, the sheep are happy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, definitely. Yeah, I think they're made yeah. Yeah, I mean it's the same as a grazing enterprise, like you see some really efficient ones and you see some really inefficient ones. Yeah, like some of those barn systems that have been like thought out well thought out, really efficient ways to get stuff fed and like get things done and get out of there fast. And then there's others that have kind of evolved from a bank barn, a bit here and a bit there, which is just the way you have to. It's the same as we'd all love the the best fences and the best farms or whatever, but you have to make do with what you got.
Speaker 2:I'd say every one of those that do have the bank barn and are making do still have a very specific dream in the head of the exact shed that they would have if they could yeah, we all, yeah, yeah, and I always do find that interest, an extra layer to sheep farming that we just don't have over here, you know, and we're lucky for that, and maybe that's why we do get to focus on the genetics and stuff, because we don't have to think about feed rations for sheep, we don't have to think about ventilation.
Speaker 2:You know, we have the freedom to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's right, and their level of, like, their average knowledge of nutrition would be like a big step higher than what your average Australian keep. I mean, obviously we know how to manage pastures, but kind of don't know what their energy requirements are each day or whatever, whereas, like, their ability to match feeds and think about what's going on is high and again, there's some great support people out there helping them do that. But yeah, no, it was a good trip.
Speaker 2:Good, that was wonderful.
Speaker 1:Righto, we'll wrap that up. Wrap that up. Thanks for listening along. Thanks to all those Canadians that listened. I think on the stats there's about 50 or 60 of you. I think I met all of you, but if I go through names I'll forget a few. So I'll try I won't do that. But yeah, thanks to all those folks that were kind enough to host me, kind enough to come and say g'day at the convention and, yeah, it was great to get to know you all and, as I've already said, make sure you look me up if you get anywhere near where we live, and we can certainly try and pay back the favour. Thanks again to Heinegger, who are proud world leaders in the manufacturing and supply of professional sheep shearing and clipping equipment. Thank you to MNSD Animal Health and Norflex Livestock Intelligence. They offer an extensive livestock product portfolio focused on animal health management, all backed up by exceptional service. We thank both of these companies for their ongoing support of the Head Shippet podcast.
