This was one of the questions discussed at a Lamb Survival Information Workshop held at the Lockhart Showgrounds on Friday, August 27.
The Australian sheep industry is feeling pressure from greater demand due to population growth.
Triggervale Stud, Lockhart in conjunction with Delta Agribusiness and Elders Wagga, held the seminar to inform sheep breeders on how to satisfy demand.
Hamish Chandler from the Australian government’s Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), Armidale spoke about the higher demands that face the Australian sheep industry.
“There is a higher demand from overseas, especially from Muslim and Hispanic communities,” Mr Chandler said.
“We are looking to have to double the sheep meat supply over the next five years to meet demand or buyers may start looking elsewhere.
“We can meet this demand purely through better genetics and nutrition management.
“We need to increase growth rate and lamb numbers.
“The challenge is how to identify which rams to breed with and which ram will be best suited to your ewes.”
Mr Chandler said that most important traits can’t be seen visually which include carcass traits and reproductive rates.
“Sire selection should coincide with types of ewes,” Mr Chandler said.
“Meat colour is also very important, if we could extend shelf life one extra day it would mean an extra 10 – 15 million dollars to the retail sector,” he said.
Key note speaker for the day was Mr Mark Ferguson from the Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia.
“Our main goal should be keeping our lambs alive and getting them on the ground,” Mr Ferguson said.
“We are eating into our future, as we eat into our ewe base we need to increase production and if we can’t get lambs on the ground we are going to jeopardize the
market.
“Sheep are worth a lot of money at the moment with sheep prices at a record high.
“In the past the value of an extra lamb was $32, the current value for an extra lamb has almost doubled to $62.
“Four things to focus on for the future of the meat industry is growth, reproduction, wool and easy care sheep.
“We want to breed sheep that are attractive to farmers and are enjoyable to have on the farm.
“How we go about breeding this type of sheep is to get rid of the optional extras like horns, dags and wrinkles,” he said.
Mr Ferguson said farmers knew in 1960 that wrinkly sheep and wooly faced sheep have less lambs.
He said sheep producers should be
leading the way breeding these traits out to increase growth rate and lambs on the ground.
“The future ewe should be fertile at 7 -8 months, well muscled, wrinkle and dag free, polled, carry quality wool and be resilient to tough times,” Mr Ferguson said.
“If sheep producers are not using Australian Sheep Breeding Values (ASBVs) there is no hope in producing these types of sheep.
“The future looks bright for better genetics and producing these types of sheep to benefit the Australian sheep industry,” he said.
Andrew Bouffler from Triggervale Stud, Lockhart said the seminar was really about informing commercial producers about research being conducted into the genetics of sheep.
“This seminar is about giving the producers information about how to improve genetics in their sheep.
“I feel there is a lot of focus on cropping information days but not a lot of information for sheep producers so I wanted to involve influential key speakers to give them the best advice,” he said.
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