A late edition! September’s Around the Camp did not send as intended due to technical difficulties. We’re very sorry it’s late. Things should return to normal with our October edition due to hit your inbox in a couple of weeks.
- Cunnamulla MeatUp take-home messages
- To feed or what to feed
- Producers take up pain relief
- AWI Breeding Leadership
- Upcoming Leading Sheep events
- Upcoming events
- Podcasts, eBulletins and surveys
Cunnamulla MeatUp take-home messages
MLA’s MeatUp forum headed to Cunnamulla early last month. Presentations focussed on rangelands and small ruminants, covering pain relief, parasite control, pasture management, enterprise selection and a virtual farm tour. Here are a couple of take-home messages from the day.
Do what you do well. Ian McLean from Bush Agribusiness discussed diversification and how, in his experience, it’s not so much what enterprise you choose but how well you do it. Ian also encouraged producers to understand their business’s constraints, such as scale and costs, but to focus on profit drivers within the production system.
Don’t waste money on unproductive sheep. Anthony Shepherd from Sheep Matters shared some insights from the Lamb Survival Producer Demonstration Site (PDS) based around Dirranbandi. His passion is helping producers determine which sheep are worth the most to the enterprise. In dry seasons, this becomes extra important to ensure inputs like feed and husbandry costs are not being wasted on sheep that are not returning a lamb or wool to the business.
To feed or what to feed?
What is your supplement supplying your livestock? Is it protein or energy? Have you got enough roughage? Do you need that expensive mineral mix? What about grape marc? It looks pretty cheap? The first thing to consider about any feeding program is what you are trying to achieve. Having a clear goal means you can determine the returns of a feeding program. The cost of feeding should not out-weigh the expected benefit. To know this, you need to have a good understanding of your sheep’s nutritional requirements (for your production goal e.g. weight gain to meet a market, preventing weight loss for breeders) and what the approximate deficit is. If you want to check up on your estimates, it may be worth sending pasture samples away for feed testing or talking to a nutritionist.
Once you know your target and your gap, work out the most cost-effective way to provide those nutrients. A feed ration can be made of many things. Once you know the cost per unit of nutrient you’re trying to supply, you can compare feeds on an equal footing. There are several calculators that can help you do this: one can be found here. Spending money on some professional advice is often worthwhile. Ruminant nutrition is complex and it is easy to spend money on a supplement that isn’t providing the nutrients your stock need or is providing it in a very expensive way. Once you know you’ve got the most cost-effective ration, you can estimate how many days you intend to feed for, and what you expect to sell for at the end of the feeding program and compare that with selling now.
Check out “The Good Food Guide for Sheep” webinar. It’s an oldie but a goodie, covering different types of supplementary feeds and comparing costs of supplements.
Producers take up pain relief
Are you on the fence about pain relief? The Tindall’s near Longreach have found lambs quickly mother up after using pain relief, which is now an integral part of their operation. There are several types of pain relief and the one you choose will depend on your enterprise. The Tindalls found NumNuts most suited their lamb marking process. They find their lambs are visibly happier, leaving the cradle and going straight back to their mothers. This means they can be released into the paddock and back onto feed sooner. Doug and Lauren Tindall say the cost of pain relief has been reduced by labour cost savings. “It takes far less time to move more mobs through the system because they mother-up so quickly,” they said.
“Consumers want to know where their food comes from and how it’s raised, so as primary producers we have a responsibility to acknowledge that and provide evidence that our lambs are reared in a system that offers a consistently high level of animal care and wellbeing. We’re incredibly proud of our track record in this regard.” Read more in this case study.
AWI’s Merino Husbandry Practices Survey 2021 showed some producers were using pain relief products incorrectly, so it might be worth double checking what product you have and how it works.
- Topical local anaesthetic (e.g. Trisolfen) – absorbed through contact with an open wound and acts only at the application site
- Injectable local anaesthetic (e.g. NumNuts) – injected but acts only at the injection site
- Injectable NSAID (e.g. Meloxicam) – injected but provides pain relief to stimulus anywhere
- Oral NSAID (e.g. Buccalgesic) – absorbed across the gums (not like a normal drench that is intended to be swallowed) and provides pain relief to stimulus anywhere
Upcoming Leading Sheep Events
- 24 October. Handler and practical EID Demonstration, ‘Lansdowne’ Tambo. To register click here or for more information contact Sam Harwood.
- 7 November. Best bet for Melbourne Cup Day – Market outlook for wool, lamb and sheep markets, webinar. More details to follow.
Upcoming events
- 25 & 26 October. Accessing free data for your grazing property, webinar. Organised by DAF. Click here for more information and to register.
- 1 November. Be finance ready, Warwick. Organised by QRIDA and RFCS. Click here for more information and to register.
Podcasts, eBulletins and Surveys
- The Yarn (AWI Podcast)
- AWI Beyond the Bale magazine
- AuctionsPlus Sheep Results and Catalogue
- AWI Weekly Wool Market Report
- Farm Biosecurity News
- MLA Prices and Markets
- Sheep Producers Australia News
- Wool Producers Australia News