Painting a picture of the sheep of the future with Johan Greeff pt. 2

Challenging the narrative: Monica Ley is carving her own career path

Farm Fit Ewes at Hannaton Merino

Painting a picture of the sheep of the future with Johan Greeff

Bringing back the border

Turning grass into money with Nigel Kerin pt.2

Turning grass into money with Nigel Kerin pt.1

Breeding a point of difference with Tom Bull

Talking teasing pt.2

Tips for teasing pt.1 with Graeme Martin

Genetics drive profits in challenging times

In the Murray River country north of Swan Hill – Tim and Tam Mulholland are the last ones standing. While they’ve endured water allocation cuts and periods of zero allocation “completely decimating” other local livestock operations, it’s been...

Making every ram purchase count

Making every ram purchase count, we touch on knowing your plan, prepping for sale day and what to look for on the day. When was the last time you considered not only which ram you would buy, but where you will be buying it from and why?

Condition Scoring with Darren Gordon

Hands-on approach keeps ewes in best condition. The old adage; “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” rings true for much of modern life. But in the sheepyards, there’s a tool that comes completely free of charge, and...

Have you done a paddock audit?

With lambing on the horizon, and scanning behind us, I’d hope that most farmers now know how many lambs they’re expecting in the coming months. Be it more or less than previous years, from now on, to maximise potential, it’s all about lamb survivabil

The Elsenburg Merino selection lines

Since 1986 there has been a divergent selection experiment running at Stellenbosch University, near Capetown in South Africa. The two lines started from the same base population of Merino ewes and have been selected either...

Bringing back the Border

In the late 1980’s, a conversation with a meat buyer ignited a spark in Border Leicester breeder Lynton Arney that would set the course for a 30-year quest to integrate technology and client needs in meeting a modern market. “I’d not long taken the..

Difference between efficient animals & efficient systems

In intensive animal production systems, like pig or chicken production, or even a beef feedlot, the aim is to produce animals that grow fast while eating less, often referred to as feed efficiency. This, of course, makes perfect sense. The biggest...

The genetics of more lambs

Almost without exception, if I ask a sheep producer what they would like to improve in their sheep they tell me they would like to wean more lambs. Sometimes they are keen to improve the scanning percentage but mostly they are keen to improve lamb...

Magnificent Maidens

Getting a good lambing result out of maiden ewes remains as a challenge for many producers. The traditional maiden ewe is one that goes to the ram for the first time at 19 months of age. However, in a maternal composite, first cross ewe...

Know more about footrot

The trait ‘susceptibility to footrot’ is quoted as FR. FR describes a sheep’s susceptibility to footrot using it’s genetic difference in footrot score. This score measures how well a sheep retains foot health under a challenge with virulent footrot.

Interview with Dawson Bradford

Dawson Bradford is one of Australia's most successful performance breeders and the Hillcroft Farms name can be found in many high performance Poll Dorset and White Suffolk pedigrees. He is now focussed on breeding shedding sheep and is again topping

Do breeding values really work

There are filing cabinets full of data that show that using breeding values is the best method of achieving rapid genetic gain across lots of different species and applications. In this zoom meeting Ferg provides some of this evidence.....

Why using breeding values isn’t selling out on tradition

There is a sweet spot of combining traditional skills with the latest science to enable rapid genetic gain. It is important to not confuse the tools with the desired outcome. The type of sheep or cattle people want to breed is a personal decision..

Interview with Ian Robertson

Ian Robertson is the manager of the nucleus flock for Merinotech WA and has been since its inception. He is responsible for achieving an amazing rate of genetic gain across a range of traits and breeding...

What will the skinny twin ewes eat?

Across most of New Zealand, lambs are only just being conceived, or not even conceived yet. By optimising ewe nutrition between now and lambing, we can give the ewes the best chance of bringing in thriving lambs in spring.

The reproduction snowball

Having more lambs weaned per ewe put to the ram has a multitude of benefits to a sheep enterprise. The beautiful thing is that these benefits are compounding or in other words these benefits snowball. If you are running a sheep enterprise...

Interview with Cara Allan

As technology develops so does our ability to understand sheep behaviour at a whole new level. Our collaborative project with AWI, Murdoch Universtiy, Muresk and Agriculture Victoria is looking to measure feed intake in sheep in real time...

Interview with Dr. David Scobie

Recently we've been working with Dr Scobie on the flystrike work on behalf of MLA. Scobie, as he prefers to be known, is originally from South Australia and has been living and working in NZ since completing his PhD. Ferg had a chance to speak....

Farmer = People that Farm - #3

Growing up on our family farm in the Victoria Mallee, I had four fantastic role models, Mum and Dad on one side of the dam, and Dad's parents, Mama and Pa on the other. Pa had suffered a blood-clot in his leg and lost his leg from above the knee...

Farmer = People that Farm - #2

In the first article in this series, I discussed how the large variation in uptake of technology across agriculture is actually not different to the level of technology use within the (very much larger) non-farming population...