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. To learn more about neXtgen Agri, visit www.nextgenagri.com.
Head Shepherd
Precision Farming with Tim Leeming
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In this current climate, should you be looking for ways to save money on farm? Or should you be looking at upping your production to cover rising costs?
This week on the Head Shepherd podcast, we hope to answer those questions for you.
Our guest this week, Tim Leeming, is well known for his precision lambing and we’ve had him as a guest on the podcast before (go check that one out here).
In this episode, Tim discusses his strategies for farming success. “When it comes to your production system - when it comes to understanding what drives that in your business - whether you've got paddocks that need to be subdivided, whether you've got soil fertility that needs improving, pasture composition that needs improving … If you're a good farm manager and have a reasonable base knowledge of how the job rolls … it's not rocket science.”
Tim and Ferg discuss the mindset behind cutting costs vs upping production. While the current advice may be to not join ewe lambs or containment feed, Tim believes in identifying where profit margins exist for a job done well. “If you do a bad job, of course, the economics of those two things might be pretty ordinary, but if you do it well, the margins are there. They're proven margins. We've seen it,” says Tim.
Tim emphasises the need for clear targets and disciplined execution. “We've got evidence of it, that if you manage your nutrition right in ewe lambs and hit these targets and do all the right things, guess what, you'll get a bloody good result, and those sheep will pay you dividends for the rest of their life on your farm because you've done that well.”
Discipline is a big theme throughout this week's podcast, with Tim collecting data when the opportunity presents itself (for example, ewe body condition when ewes are in the yards). “If you think about a mob of ewes, for instance, and how many times that they might visit the stockyards over the year. There are probably at least eight times in a year that those animals will be in a yard facility and generally, they will be going up a drafting race or drenching race or through a sheep handler,” he explains.
For Tim, consistently doing the small things well sets a foundation for long-term success. “It's a two, four, five-minute job to get a line in the sand on where that condition score of that mob is at that particular time. I'm like a dog with a bone. I’m very, very persistent on making sure that we record that, every time we're bringing those livestock in the yards,” says Tim. “It’s so important in your decision-making and your management. So, you know, that is a discipline thing.”
Tim has a huge passion for farming and there are some great takeaways from this podcas
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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Technology and Strategies for Livestock Management
Speaker 1Welcome to the Head Shepherd Podcast . I'm your host , mark Ferguson , ceo at NextGen 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 and Allflex 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 Norflex , or perhaps better known as Cooper's Animal Health in Australia , offer one of New Zealand and 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 borne out of this podcast can help them and their farming clients achieve their mission of the science of healthier animals .
Speaker 1Heineken 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 Heineken name is synonymous with quality , reliability and precision . The Heineken 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 welcome Tim Leaming back onto the show . Before we get that underway , sophie's going to have a chat with us about a new app , a smart worm app that's being tested in New Zealand at the moment .
Speaker 2Yeah , in the wonderful world of sheep farming in 2024 , we now have an app on our phone that can match with the weight of a lamb and basically based on daily life weight gain decides whether it needs a drench or not , and it's a pretty cool piece of technology and , by the looks of it , very user-friendly .
Speaker 2So we they've been trialing it in new zealand . It's a irish-based company that came up with the program but they've been , you know , training it at , trialing it across the hawks bay and stuff , and they have reduced trench usage between 37 and 57 percent over the trial period . So yeah , it's . I think it's pretty interesting , obviously , what with resistance and all of this , and should we be drenching all of the animals ? Yeah , it's , by the looks of it's , really user-friendly . Just connects to a little device and it's almost like a true test or a gallagher on your phone in a very teared down format . And yeah , it's helping with whether we actually need to drench an animal or not , which is really good yeah , great little company there , cotter agritech , out of ireland .
Speaker 1Uh , yeah , if you google cotter agritech , you'll find them . And yeah , we'll definitely get those guys on the show to have a yarn about their app as well . But , um , yeah , father and son team , they're doing great things . So , yeah , it's really , really interesting and we've out lots of people are struggling with their effective drenches out there . So , any , any opportunity to to not put a chemical down the animal's throat and not put further pressure on those chemicals then , um , that's , it's a great thing to have . So , yeah , I've only ever seen it in video form , but it looks pretty cool , looks pretty user friendly , as you say . Well , we'll get on with the show now with Tim Lemming .
Speaker 1Tim's known to many out there . He's been on the podcast before . He's well known for his precision lemming philosophy and talks about that on a range of different forums . So you might've come across Tim , but in this podcast we go through a range of things .
Speaker 1He's recently scaled down the business a little bit and he'll talk about the decision-making process around that and just his general tips for production and I guess , the key theme really being that , rather than sort of saving your way to prosperity , it's about investing your way to prosperity . So how do we , rather than sort of getting in this spiral of sort of trying to save money and then having less production and having less money to spend and then saving some more , he sort of talks about the opposite direction , where you sort of invest in your business and then , even when things are tough , there's still opportunities to improve things , and they're the things that he sort of focuses on . So another great chat with Limo , we'll get it underway . Great to have Tim Lemming back joining us again . This is the second time you've been on Head Shepherd Limo , welcome back .
Speaker 3Thanks , ferg , good to be back .
Speaker 1Yeah , and you've just walked out of the ARS preg scanning . You left George down there working away and you've come in to record this . But pretty tight , a little result happening , unfolding as we speak .
Speaker 3Yeah , it is good we're actually joined a little smidge earlier than normal this year so we've kept . We've got a lot of red tags so we're scanning all the . We had 1,600 red tags on our lease block and all lambs is lambs last year . Then we had our best result ever sort of last year with joining new lambs and they were 194 in lamb at the 9% dry rate last year and so that's sort of mid-August to mid-September they lambed really early and landed and lambed over 30 days and then we brought them back into a mid-June lambing and joined them for 15 days , teased them obviously , and they're going 198 . So that's a new record for us . We've been in the 180s before in a ULAM , you know , going back as a one-and-a-half-year-old but pretty excited about what that extrapolates out at . So at 135% weaning as lambs last year . And you know I've had this little target of ahead of three lambs per average weaned per ewe before 27 months of age and I reckon we're going to be right on target to maybe accomplish that this year .
Speaker 1So exciting , yeah , amazing . So , yeah , it's very exciting . Maybe just walk us through how you achieved that . So , if we go back to mating those ewe lambs , they were the ones that were in the feedlot when we were there at the T90 field and they were on beans and looked after them .
Speaker 3Well then , yeah , that was the feedlot scenario was something that I've been thinking about for a while . We put them into the feedlot last year , just on straight beans actually and ad-lib barley straw during the teasing and joining . So we joined them for 30 days , teased for 14 . So you know , we know that we've had that sort of start joining . Well , it's really important . Obviously they've got to be in the right age and all those sort of things .
Speaker 3But one of the things that we've struggled with Ferg over the years was , you know , trying to sort of production feed ewe lambs in a paddock situation is difficult and very labour intensive in a paddock situation is difficult and very labour intensive and we knew that . You know , even at 100 grams a day growth rate , new lambs you're still going to have . If there's 1,500 out there , there's still going to be some of those that are going to be losing weight . And so the idea with the feedlot and this idea , you know , no doubt plenty of other people would have come up with that idea , but it sort of stemmed from . Actually about probably five years ago we had a cell rack meeting in Warrnambool and we had a guy talking to us from the dairy industry about heifer rearing . So he was a contractor that grew out heifers for dairy farmers and you know it was such a . You know he goes .
Speaker 3Look , I just , you know , manage my nutrition so I hit those weight targets for those heifers to get AI'd and I just hit it . You know like it's , I just do it every year , year in , year out , and that's what I get paid to do and I sort of scratch my head . You know , here we are sort of having some pretty good results some years and then some ordinary ones , and you just go . You know this is just too hit and miss , it's inconsistent and it's annoying . So let's just for the six , you know , that important period of you know , pre-joining and during that joining time , let's really put a prescribed , you know nutrition to those ewe lambs so they just nail the target .
Speaker 3And sure enough we nailed the target and we're 20% up , you know , on our best sort of results ever , and it was , you know , we had 9% dry , but you've always got those free martini bloody dry ewes in your system . Obviously they got sold , as we've been doing that for a long time now , selling the dries off . But yeah , unfortunately I've just sold that feedlot so I'm going to have to build another one first . So that's in progress and that'll be up and running next summer on our home farm . But yeah , you can't underfeed a growing sheep , ferg , and if you want to sort of establish that genetic potential , you know it's going to be the norm for us that all our ewe lambs will go into a feedlot and then post that . Obviously that important stuff that we've , you know we've got in the T90 modules too , ferg , about that importance of weaning , the importance of ewe recovery and getting that condition score back onto that , especially that second lamber or that you know one-and-a-half-year-old ewe that's still growing If we go .
Speaker 1I guess , to hit that target with accuracy was that sort of knowing what you were feeding , putting down the automatic feeder , or was that a bit of weighing and a bit of monitoring and adjustment and sort of . Yeah , I guess , what was the ? How much monitoring versus just knowing exactly what they were getting ?
Speaker 3Yeah , it was more .
Speaker 3You know , I had it in my head that we had to get over 200 grams a day and , conscious of the fact that you know , we could have popped an absolute cracking feedlot mix into those ewe lambs , and they might have been doing , you know , 300 to 400 grams a day and I just had this sort of horrible feeling of holy dooly .
Speaker 3There isn't that many triplets and quads I might have out there , which wouldn't be ideal , but we thought we'd obviously weigh the lambs when they went in with the teasers first , and then we had to rip the teasers out , so we did another weigh before the rams went in and ultimately we'd love that sort of walkover weigh set up in the feedlot , which we will definitely get something like that to make that job a little bit easier . But , yeah , a lot of discipline in that and I think 200 grams a day is all you need for a ewe lamb joint . Yeah , but it's sort of mathematics . It means that you know you're probably going to have bugger , all that are actually losing weight when you're over 200 grams at A .
Speaker 1Yeah , so obviously a fairly rapid turnaround . So those girls lambed in what did you say ? August , and then they're back sort of with the ram by Middle of January , January , yeah .
Speaker 3Yeah , so that again . You know this is going to sound bad , but I've landed a couple of weeks earlier just to work in with school holidays . Don't get me wrong , anyone listening , I'm not turning into some sort of lifestyle farmer , but I am a little bit . And I thought we put in a lot of plantain on this lease block last year and subdivided it into five paddocks and I was really impressed with some plantain that I looked at on a couple of properties in the last couple of years and I just thought I really would like to extend my season a bit . Each end which plantain does I really like it as a plant I had some years ago but we didn't have the chemical options to really control weeds , you know , alas , sort of thistles and things like that . But we have the knowledge and know-how now . But we have the knowledge and know-how now . So those red tag ULAMs at Lambda's LAMs , we early and later them at scanning time so we were able to wean the early ones a couple of weeks before the later ones . We then divided them into light , mids and heavies , divided them into light , mids and heavies . So obviously there's lambs in there would have failed to rear . There was lambs in there that reared one , and there's lambs in there that reared two and possibly three lambs . So you had a very big range of condition score profiles . We wanted to fast track and correct that so you could throw a blanket over them and put weight on those lights .
Speaker 3Mids and summer crops uh , something that we've been using now for five years as a means of not feeding our new batch of lambs but to actually recover our one , one and a half year olds , um , and they can just smash the weight on like you would not believe like , and you can do it in the lifetime .
Speaker 3You feed budget tables and have a look at what a you know three or four ton rape crop and sticking a skinny growing one and a half year old , you post weaning on a summer crop and see it explode , and not literally , um , but they , you know , sometimes in our environment , in 600 mil rainfall zone , sort of in the northern half of west of victoria , you know summer crops can be pretty fickle and you know you can get them in early hope , hope for a good , good spring .
Speaker 3But you know , sometimes well know this year is an exception , but a lot of the time it doesn't rain from December to April and your summer crop's done and dusted literally by end of January . So where I think we get a bit of a mind shift in that I think you're actually better off feeding a young , young lamb than starting it off on on supplementary feed all the way through , whether it's grain or solids or whatever you're using , and don't even bother putting them on a summer crop because your back of envelope . Way better off putting weight on a ewe that you know is going to be with you for the next three or four years and and have her hit her genetic potential as early as possible . And , um , that replacement of condition score in those skinny ewe lambs going into a second lamb is . It's been fantastic for us yeah
Downsizing and Future Investments
Speaker 3, excellent .
Speaker 1So to what extent did you so ? You fat , skinned those ewes at weaning and then and split them up , or you just bought them all onto the summer crop and just put weight on everything no , we , we actually put the skinny , skinnies and mids on it .
Speaker 3You know , fun , funnily enough , we were feeding in November grain because it looked like a fairly early finish to the spring in our part of the world . And then , lo and behold , we had this insane amount of rain in December , january . So we sort of had started another season , basically . But prior to that rain happening in December , we were feeding the lights and mids and then allocating some summer feed as a set of this plantain . Obviously , the skinnies and the mids went onto that as a priority over the fat ones . Yeah , it was good .
Speaker 1You mentioned the feedlots being sold and that was part of a bit of a change in , I guess , where your assets have been sitting . Talk us through that decision a little bit and sort of , yeah , the drivers and how it's . I guess in business and farming everyone's sort of it's all about growth , growth , growth . But there's different ways to grow and you're obviously doing it through or changing tact a bit . It'd be good , just to .
Speaker 3Yeah , it's funny . A number of people have reminded me that . They said , oh , you said you were always going to settle down at some stage and I'll probably , and I think I remember saying it along the way . And anyway , we've got two daughters . They're now both at boarding school in Adelaide and both of the girls are super keen on farming . You know they certainly help Georgie and I when they're at home and you know they like fanging around and moving sheep and mucking around with the dogs , like a lot of kids do .
Speaker 3But you know we were I suppose the last sort of 25 years has been running reasonably ragged and not looking after themselves probably as well as I should . And yeah , I suppose we bought 12 , 13 years ago . We bought , you know , a roll of fairly big dice and sort of tripled the size of our operation in one hit . We went down to a 45% equity level in the business , which is pretty scary in livestock farming , especially sheep . But yeah , we bought at a time that no one really wanted to buy . Interest rates were actually around 7% , believe it or not , so similar to probably where they are now . Might have even been a bit higher . So but yeah , it's been a great thing and I love . You know , planning and developing land it's sort of a real passion and it was yeah , I suppose it was just we'd had such a you know crack in the last 6 or 7 years . It's just been awesome .
Speaker 3We've spent a hell of a lot of money on the land we bought and then we had seven springs in a row , commodities have been flying , interest rates have plummeted and land prices have gone nuts as well . It was just an opportunity , I guess , and I never really wanted to put the farm for sale and sell to someone I don't like and have people walk all over it , and you know that didn't appeal to me one bit . But we just had an opportunity to sell to a young guy that is an incredible young fellow and a great stock manager and he worked for us for a period of time a few years ago and he was on the hunt to expand . And anyway , george and I just chatted and he dropped in to get some advice on looking at another property not far away and George and I said you , you know we could offer some of our land to him and you know we'd love it to to go to him and he'd worked on the farm and been developing it when he was with us and yeah . So a lot kind of long story short , that's what happened .
Speaker 3And we've downsized by two-thirds and going back to some lease country in our home property and , yeah , we're going from sort of four and a half back to one and a half and enjoying a few more weekends and getting to , you know , spend a bit more time with the kids , and they're both over in Adelaide and George and I sort of try and get over there every two or three weeks . You know , every two or three weeks we might shoot over there for a three or four-day weekend and don't worry , when you've got an empty nest and you don't have to entertain kids and go to the school bus , especially with daylight savings , sometimes we might come in at 8 o'clock at night . We've found out that we've got a hell of a lot more food in the fridge . We're living very cheaply but yeah , we just sort of go to work together , which we haven't been doing for a long time .
Speaker 3I've been sort of driving out the gate for the last 12 years over to the other farms and doing so much work to do over there and George has sort of been at home running the home operation with our studies and stuff , and so it's been really pleasant working together as a husband and wife team again and , and um , having a bit more time for ourselves and , you know , even just losing a bit of weight and , you know , exercising and all those sort of things yeah , the thrill of the thrill of building it is good , but then , yeah , also good to actually realize that capital , because a lot of people just yeah , yeah , I guess , build and build and then maybe still flogging themselves , still building and next generation might grab it , and then , yeah , not actually enjoy all the fruits of that hard labour .
Speaker 1But yeah , it's obviously a careful balance between how that works and every individual is different . But it's awesome to hear that that's worked really well and sounds like going swimmingly .
Speaker 3Yeah , yeah , it's awesome to hear that that's worked really well and sounds like going swimmingly . Yeah , yeah , it's a steep learning curve . You know you dump a heap of capital into a new , you know , passive assets and stuff and you know , don't worry , it's a very steep learning curve for George and I to analyse and to get ahead around the varying investments that are out there . We're very , very conservative in our approach . We certainly don't want to kiss a lot of our hard work goodbye with some dodgy little investments somewhere . But we've got a really good team around us that are helping in that front . And you know there's a lot of things like asset protection and trust and all those sort of things that you know we've probably , you know , avoided over the years .
Speaker 3But yeah , it's exciting actually , and land is something that you know we wouldn't discount in getting back into at some stage . But it'll be a different angle that we look at it . It'll be more of an investment opportunity . As much as I'd love to be hanging off the bus driver 24 hours a day , I don't . But yeah , there's always opportunities that arise and there's cycles , isn't there ? It sort of goes ebbs and flows a bit . So , yeah , we'll just sort of wait and see . In that space I'm only 52 , so I've got a few posts to bang in , I reckon .
Speaker 1Maybe , with that extra well , a bit more time available to get in the maybe , rather than be in the weeds the whole time . Seeing ag from a different angle , maybe a bit more time , but what's the ? I don't know ? Am I reading the sentiment at the moment , as people took obviously a big hit at the end of last year in terms of confidence and that while land prices sort of back up to better levels anyway , the confidence doesn't seem to have come up with it . Is that what you're seeing out there ?
Speaker 3Yeah , I think , yeah , I have , and it's sort of it's something that annoys me a little bit . There's a lot of good young farmers out there that you know need confidence and , yeah , sometimes when there's a check in the system or things don't go away whether it's a season or markets or both or whatever it might be there's a tendency to think below the line and you know we'll blame the season , we'll blame the markets , and you know there's that sort of a and I suppose I sort of tend to refer to it as miserable farming and it's like saving a dollar to save a dollar , rather than . You know , fertilizer in the last couple of years has been expensive and you know there's only so long that you cannot put fertilizer out and we know that from all benchmarking in livestock that you know the themes in profitability haven't changed at all in my farming years . Stocking rates the main driver in growing grass increases your stocking rate . Yeah , yeah , it's concerning that . You know , really , that cost-cutting , that sort of miserable type of attitude , and you know , don't worry , I know you're not like one of those advisors , ferg , you're a positive type , which is why we're bloody mates , I'd say , because you know , I think there's so much growth and opportunity , whether it's technology , whether it's new , it could be new pasture species , it could be anything out there that you know there's so much opportunity out there and I think when you know it's just a bad attitude that can rub off a bit in tougher times .
Speaker 3And you know , I've heard some horrible things about you know that joining new lambs , for instance , is not a profitable thing to do . And that's coming out of highly educated consultants that are running around telling farmers probably what they want to hear , which is don't spend the money , save the money . But you know , let's have a heap of unreproductive , bloody dry sheep running in on your farm . You know that's just madness . So yeah , stock containment I heard last night that you know apparently it doesn't pay to contain livestock . Like what sort of rocks have these guys got in their heads ? You know , stock containment has been such a fantastic tool and it may not be for every part of Australia , but certainly in our Western Victorian environment that you know failed springs and managing ground cover and getting a kickstart to your leaf area on the break is stock and labour efficiency . The list goes on . Just super , super good .
Speaker 3You know some of these downturns can , you know , play around with people's heads a little bit and I think you know , as Yvonne said earlier there , ferg , the commodity prices have sort of rebounded pretty well in the meet game and you know , as we know , there was umpteen sort of scenarios that came together badly last spring and caused a shock to the system . But you know what you see . You know socially and stuff around the traps is . You know people sort of shutting down on unnecessary expenditure and things . But it's more and that's fine . We all do it . We all got to do it . You know you're certainly not going to start throwing $100 bills around if you haven't got it .
Speaker 3But when it comes to your production system , when it comes to understanding what drives that in your business , you know whether you've got paddocks that need to be subdivided , whether you've got soil fertility that needs improving pasture composition that needs improving , pasture composition that needs improving . You know those expenditures if you're a good farm manager and you've got a reasonable base knowledge of how the job rolls . You know stocking rate . How do I get more stocking rate ? You know grow more grass . That's the cheapest feed . Utilise it . You know it's not rocket science .
Speaker 3And the thing that annoys me is that you know , sometimes people , you know , they even get advice .
Speaker 3That might be , you know , to cut this cost and you don't have to do that , and it might be don't join new lambs .
Speaker 3You know stock containment doesn't pay .
Speaker 3You know there's two things that have come from agricultural advisors that I've heard of , you know , in the last six months .
Speaker 3That is absolutely a load of shit and I will bloody demonstrate that you know as many times as you like that if you do a bad job , of course , of course the economics of those two things might be pretty ordinary , but if you do it well , the margins are there .
Speaker 3They're proven margins . We've seen it , we've got evidence of it that if you manage your nutrition right and you lambs and hit those targets and do all the right things , guess what ? You'll get a bloody good result and those sheep will pay you dividends for the rest of their life on your farm because you've done that well . So yeah , I just , you know sometimes that negativity can be quite destructive in farming and we've got to try and you know , keep the job above the line and you know , look at the things where the good spends are to spend a dollar , to make a dollar , fifty or two dollars or three , rather than saving a dollar and watching your place fall down around every year and your grass production decrease because you haven't put fertiliser out for the last three years , you know it's yeah , that spiral or something we've we've seen happen and once , yeah , you don't , don't put the fur out , so the grass doesn't grow .
Speaker 1The grass doesn't grow , so the sheep are in poor condition . The sheep in poor condition , so haven't got any lambs . You haven't got any lambs , so you haven't got money , so don't buy fertilizer . So , yeah , like it's . Yeah , yeah , that's , it's a one way .
Speaker 3It's sad , yeah yeah , and I remember it was probably 10 years ago or something and the Victorian government came up with a target or something and I can't remember if it was 2030 or something . I can't remember what it was , but it was . You know , we need to increase Victoria's agricultural production by 50% and I remember at the time taking offense to that . I just thought how dare they ? How dare they ? You know , how the hell am I working my ass off trying to sell as much pasture and then you drive down , you drive across the district and you just go . My God , there is so much opportunity to increase production in Australia , probably in any country in the world . I guess . There is so much room for improvement .
Young Farmers and Agricultural Growth
Speaker 3And you know , one of the heartening and great things and it's weird when you get older because you go geez , there's a lot of good young farmers come along . They might be that young , but they're just senior . But I reckon there is there's a real shift in the last 10 years . It's been terrific . We've got so many young farmers around our district now and I just love the enthusiasm and I love you know a lot of them are university educated . They mightn't actually have studied agriculture , but they've come back to a family operation and are taking , you know , taking the step forward and are positive and stuff .
Speaker 3And you know , the last six months we've had a little bit of a check in the system and interest rates have gone up and commodities have fallen and the season wasn't that great . You know , they're the guys that I worry about the most and they're the ones that you know I make an absolute point of trying to encourage them as much as I can and trying to get them into that positive frame and move forward . You know , spend the dollar to make $2 , you know , keep going , do , because if they listen to some of these bloody old , miserable farmers , you know it's no good for them . It is absolutely no good for them . And yeah , anyway , that's just my little bitch .
Speaker 1Thanks , mate . With the downsizing that has allowed a bit more time to focus on the start . Is that the intention , or is it still a big commercial problem ?
Speaker 3Yeah , you know we'll be around that sort of 4,000 lambs . I've actually bought some cattle food . You might be sure for saying that , oh good , everyone's into it , so good . So yeah , we've always backgrounded cattle for years and years and years and you know we've had well . Last year I think we had 500 or something on , the year before we had 1,000 on and they were sort of additional DSE lawnmowers , you know grass utilizers .
Speaker 3Sometimes we trade cattle if the price is right , but a lot of the time we will do sort of basically like a contract rearing for a lot of my dairy cattle and it works really well . We do a good job , they pay us pretty well and there's no capital outlayed . So from a risk point of view it's pretty safe . But yeah , I've never actually done an official sort of , you know , buy a bull and join to cow . So I did . I bought some heifers and I bought some heifers with calves at foot and we joined them and yeah , I'm pretty bloody happy . I was just under 100 head and 94% in the heifer conception and 98 in the cows and it was all good . Do it Do ?
Speaker 1it mate .
Speaker 3And did an AI program with the heifers and did an early and late fetal aging with the scanning the other week . And you know I don't mind them , they're all right . I don't know if they're going to make me any money or anything . I might sell them if the price goes up , but anyway .
Speaker 1I think in those I think they're having that well , there's a whole heap of reasons but just different set of mouths to chew , to control posture as well as disease break , and all those heaps of reasons that , like you , can fit them into a system that will add to be one plus one will make them more than two .
Speaker 3Yeah , yeah . Well , as I said , I think we've had cattle in our system forever actually , and it's been a good thing . We don't really cut hail or silage , and so bringing in that extra horsepower on top of as good a weaning rates as we can try to achieve as well yeah , we sort of try and manage our feed that way and then but yeah , so , anyway , it's been a bit of fun . So we've probably got some Wagyu's as well . I might just eat them . I just like the thought of having some Wagyu's as well . I might just eat them . I just like the thought of having some Wagyu's out there and just visualising the end product . Probably a bit too much .
Speaker 1It's just salivating when you're driving around , mate .
Speaker 3Yeah , yeah . Yeah , they're not much to look at , actually , they're kind of an ugly looking specimen , but anyway , they're behaving well . They taste good , yeah , yeah .
Speaker 1Liam , I think it doesn't matter which way you look at it , you and George have been pretty successful at farming and a lot of that is . I know you're passionate about just doing everything well , and it's what we call them . 1% or whatever . It doesn't matter what we call them , but's the kind of that , that ethos of if you're going to do it , you do it to the best of your ability and you sort of don't . Just because it's a cold day or a wet day or a dry day or the , or someone said I'll need no , it doesn't change the fact that you've got to get out there and do do things to the best of your ability yeah , yeah , and I guess you know a lot of farming actually comes down to discipline and often it's a risky thing to be involved in farming and the fact that we're farming in a climate that we've got no control over .
Speaker 3So there's certain things that we can obviously recognise , know , obviously recognise and try and manage our system and our enterprise to suit that environment as best we can , on historic data and things . But you know , we've got markets and climate , which is , you know , probably one more thing that we've got less control over , you know , than a lot of businesses
Managing Sheep Operations and Profitability
Speaker 3, I guess . I don't know . I've never really sort of thought about it that way . I'm thinking on my feet at the moment , but you know a lot of the things that we do , you know , have control over , we've got to do well , and one of those things you know , if you think about a mob of ewes , for instance , on your farm and how many times they might visit the stockyards over the year , and you know every time that it might be shearing , might be crutching , weaning rams in , rams out , or it might be rams you know out , for instance , it could be teasers out as well . We've got pre-land animal health . We've got what other ? Yeah , so there's , you know , know there's probably at least eight times in a year . Um , there's land marking eight or nine times . You know , whatever it is as a as quite it's nearly once a month basically , that those animals will be into a yard facility and generally they will be going up a drafting race or drenching race or through a sheep handler . And the thing that annoys me a bit , a lot actually , if you've been in one of my lifetime year groups , I um like a broken record as far as ramming things down their throats . We know that lifetime use good repetition learning you should . You should hear me with repetition banging on , but you know it's a two- , four five-minute job to you know whether you've got a mob of 200 or a mob of 2,000 in the yards to get a line in the sand on where that condition score of that mob is at that particular time . And I just cannot fathom any staff that has worked for me know that I'm like a dog with a bone or very , very persistent on making sure that every time we bring those livestock in the yards . Unless it was yesterday , we've got that , you know we've got in today . You know we've got a mobile phone in our pocket or it's not far away If you're a millennial or a gen that's probably actually embedded into part of your anatomy . So those you've got the opportunity to , you know , grab that condition score and that's so important in your decision-making and your management and also overseeing your management and how well it's going , whether it's supplementary feeding , whether it's your actual mob movement and pasture performance and things like that and even your animal health , for instance .
Speaker 3So you know that is a discipline thing and I suppose one of the you know what do we need to manage a sheep operation ? Well , a manual weight crate , like my old buddy Pratley weight crate that I bought in 1994 for $1,050 . It's had three sets of weigh bars under it and it's fallen off the ute a couple of times . We've had to weld those little handles back on . But that crate and your you know Lifetime e-management app on your phone , those two things are inexpensive really and are just so vital for you know growing sheep and obviously managing grown sheep .
Speaker 3You know those two bits of equipment . And sometimes , you know you , you go past , we see tens of thousands of dollars worth of technology in the arts and then you ask the cocky whether or what are you , what's your condition score of of those sheep and they are all right , but they've got , you know , a whole filing system of pregnancy status on those 2 000000 years , but he doesn't know what conditions go out . Yeah , like , get your priorities right , mate . Like you've spent all this time getting all this other information that's actually pretty meaningless and you haven't got the fundamentals right , like , so those basic disciplines , I think is super important and we've got to instill that , you know , across the industry .
Speaker 1Yeah , and like you were saying before , I mean these are the reasons that there's all the upside that there is because there's just heaps of people that's not doing that sort of stuff , that whether it's the way they buy their rams or it's the way they manage the ewes , or it's the way they feed their stock , there's the gap between the kind of the best and the average and the rest is massive . And that's , I guess , what keeps me positive . Really , like the opportunity is just massive for ag if we remove the wastage . Yeah .
Speaker 3Yeah , I agree , I agree entirely . I think that you know this year's been , you know , with the early summer rain that we had in Western Victoria and you know it was pretty general . We had this influx of , you know , rebooting of a lot of perennials and even some reshooting of annual , you know , even clover and things like that , and so it was like a little spring kicker over the summer . You know , I would imagine I spoke to Muscano this morning and he said it's not actually crept in yet because he's doing sort of you know he's been doing sort of May , sort of early June lambas at the moment , but I reckon his next month you will see some fantastic scanning results coming through and that is being driven by a whole influx of green feed in that January , early February period . Yes , but the penny won't drop , ferg . You know it'll be like bloody Groundhog Day next year when we actually get a normal summer and it doesn't rain and they'll go .
Speaker 3You know , the thing that you've got to do in farming , I reckon , is enjoy and record the successes and the reasons why something went really really well and you know , and it might be geez , you know , guess what my ewes scanned at 180 . It's the best I've ever done in bloody 15 years , and go , oh , that's right , we had a heap of green feed and my ewes actually jumped 0.2 or 0.3 of a condition score and that made me , you know that allowed that to happen . You've got to recognise that . So you know that might be a nice leg up to someone . And go , well , what can I do to actually get my ewes to that point next year when it doesn't have green feed ? But I might be able to , you know , like , allow weaning ? You know I don't wean my lambs , you know . So , off the ewes , you know . So there's things like that that you know we need . You know so , off the use . You know so there's things like that that , um , you know we need .
Speaker 3You know more and more farmers to do is to try and get , and discipline brings consistency . And you know if your , if your production system is up and down like a bloody yo-yo and and that could be from seasonal impacts and or it could be that you're relying on a shit-hot price received for your lambs , well , just , you know why don't you get off your ass and produce more lambs ? So you know , if the price goes up , you're going to double header . But you know , if the price stays reasonably ordinary , you've actually got more to sell . You know , I just yeah , anyway , that's why we've always found sort of keep trying to set a bar , try and beat the . You know , set a new target , hit that target , move that target forward , increase amount of lambs per hectare , increase , you know , overall production . Yeah , anyway , it's just those . You know , as you said , the 1% here , 3% there , 5% there . Put it all together and where am I ?
Speaker 1Yeah , and I think , as you've already covered , but there's . I mean , you heard people saying , well , lamb's not worth anything , so I don't need to manage it to get any more of them . But still , the more it goes out the gate , the more money you make . Unless it's costing you more , it's cost production's higher than , but even so , you've got to limit the time in hardship , whether that's drought or prices . To like if you've either ended up with an older flock or just less productive flock because of it , then that the impact of that will be years . It won't be , won't be months . So you gotta be really careful to keep the hard times to the hard times , rather than letting it impact your business for several years because you've made some decision not to draw news or to not feed them and so then they're running light and , yeah , whatever , there's a whole heap of . Gotta be really careful not to cut the absolute critical parts out of your business which are a fertilizer and condition score if you're in the sheep business yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , that's right .
Speaker 3Yeah , you know . And often condition score reviews , and you know it . Can you know drag through two or ? Yeah , you know , and often condition score reviews , and you know they . Can you know , drag through two or three years . You know , if you stuff up a marble shape or decide , oh no , I'm not going to buy any more Bailey and lose your marbles in .
Speaker 3April and let them dive down to the depths of , you know , of low condition score . You know , god , it's just you know it could take you two years to replace that decision on condition on their back . So yeah , but yeah , we said we're going to keep it positive , yeah we will Exactly .
Speaker 1Speaking of keeping it positive , you better get back to the yards and start pushing up some sheep before you , or at least take a nice cool drink out of georgie .
Speaker 3Yeah , yeah , I better .
Speaker 1Um , yeah , for sure it's been awesome having you back limo on on the show before we . Before we do wrap up , it'd be good just to cover up from t90 a lot of the concepts that you've sort of been talking about and , I guess , philosophies that you farm by between us all have wrapped them up into the modules of T90 so that for those out there who are sort of listening along thinking , yeah , it's all right for him , he's got it all covered , but a lot of that knowledge and collective knowledge across the group has sort of been put in the modules of T90 , so it's certainly something . If you're out there wondering how you go from being in the downward spiral to getting some of these concepts locked into your business , then T90 modules have definitely been designed for those sort of people .
Speaker 3Yeah , and I thoroughly enjoyed running a couple of groups last year where we did , you know , some lambing prep modules and it was really good .
Speaker 3We did some stuff in relation to comparing different mob sizes in twins and triplets and it was really good . And , like the knowledge and , you know , the latest sort of R&D it's all embedded in all those modules and like any program Ferg , like you know , I both delivered Lifetime U and stuff in the early days and it took a long . You know it's like trying to extract teeth to get farmers to do Lifetime U . When it first came out I think it was about bloody $400 and subsidised by 75% or something , and you know you nearly had to offer them a slab of beer to actually go out and join a group . But it , you know , but it gained momentum and I think T9 is going to sort of probably do the same , for you know it needs to just sort of slowly gain a little bit of momentum . And you know it's usually word of mouth and things like that and people you know getting a good experience and spread the word . Yeah exactly .
Speaker 1We'll put the link in the show notes and we will do parallel as well . But the yeah towards90.comau , I think we'll find it , but we'll make sure that thing's in the show
T90
Speaker 1notes . If people are interested in finding out where they can get a local deliverer to help them go through a module that's relevant to them , yeah , they can get a local deliverer to help them go through a module that's relevant to them .
Speaker 3Yeah , great .
Speaker 1All right , mate , back to the yards and hopefully it's still sitting at 198 when you get back there .
Speaker 3Yeah , I might have packed up and just left them in the yards for it , anyway , no , no , all good , fer , great to chat , and we'll catch up with you soon .
Speaker 1Excellent Thanks , mate . 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 orflex , they offer an extensive livestock product 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 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 Head Shaper podcast .
