“I’m actually embarrassed to say now that I used to think sheep farmers had it easy.” said sheep expert Geoff Duddy, addressing the Best Wool Best Lamb meeting at Wakool. Geoff spent 27 years with NSW DPI in both Sheep and Wool research and extension roles before establishing his own private sheep consultancy (Sheep Solutions) in 2013. Recognised nationally as a lamb feed-lotting specialist, Geoff co-developed the Sheep CRC Lamb Feedlot Calculator and now also farms sheep 60 kilometres over the border in Southern Qld.

“I’ve spent 30 odd years doing technical stuff and all that sort of infrastructure. I’ve learned so much from the floor, people doing it out there on the farm.”

“These are the farming P’s: Planning, prices, production, parentage (or genetics), performance (or efficiencies), predation and personal.”

“On the personal side, we’ve got to talk. I will relate it to how we actually went through a pretty hard time up there, during our last lambing and how it affected us and people were actually good enough to put their hand up and ask if we were ok.”

With an initial introduction out of the way, Geoff introduced a panel of local sheep producers to serve as a sounding board for the night’s discussions.

First to the panel was local sheep genetics enthusiast and sheep producer Tim Mulholland.

Born in New Zealand, Tim recounted how seeing the diversity in performance and climatic/land suitability of the traditional sheep breeds opened his eyes to the opportunity of dual-purpose sheep and the role genetics play. After meeting his wife Tamara while travelling in Australia, Tim and Tamara first farmed in NZ.

“We were able to save a deposit for a farm back in New Zealand because things had crashed.”

“We learnt a lot while we were back there. Different breeds, the meat industry and dual-purpose animals.”

“We then had the opportunity to come farming here, and we knew what we wanted to implement, but then we sort of hit the Millennium drought, and then the whole water infrastructure issues that were going on here, which was quite a challenge.”

Despite plenty of challenges, the Mulholland’s continued to be as proactive in their approach to farming as with their sheep breeding. Their farming operation is now geographically diversified to limit climatic risks and to move away from a reliance on variable water allocations.

The second-panel member was Enduro White Suffolk and Ultra White Stud owner Guy Treweek. Ultra Whites have been a recent addition to the Treweek breeding enterprise with clean skin breed, enabling sheep producers to skirt around the shearing shortages, and reduce the workload.

“We’ve gone the Ultra White path, because at the moment, they’re the only clean skin breed where it is compulsory to record sheep genetics if you want to breed them.” said Guy

“We spent all these years teaching everyone about sheep genetics for all the other breeds. So you might as well keep that.”

With fat lamb producers having additional cost burden of shearing crossbreds, it is hoped that Ultra Whites can fill the brief.

“There’s no money in shearing crossbred sheep. There’s still money in shearing Merinos but there’s a burden in shearing anything else.”

Mixed irrigation farmer Simon Ettershank rounded out the panel. Simon’s farming operation was the more traditional make-up of the three-panel members. Simon stated he had drifted to more of a cropping focus in recent years. Simon has implemented the use of a combi clamp to assist in cutting down the handling of sheep in the yards.

“We use to draft the lambs off and draft them into sexes, run them back around the race for a needle and drench. The combi clamp just does it all in one pass. Let the ewes run through, clamp the lambs, give them their needle, drench and back liner and draft them each way. That’s probably the best bit of equipment we’ve ever bought.” said Simon.

As the night progressed, Geoff shared a wealth of knowledge on market trends, export market influences and the challenges of getting the true Australian flock numbers.

The economic difference of trade lamb carcasses to merino lambs was stark in Geoff’s data. A $11.96 lower price for the merino on a 23kg carcass from 2015-2020, growing to $19.31down for 2021-23, $37.72 down for 2024 and $37.95 for 2025. While economics was the main driving factor around producer decision-making, the discussion did turn to eat quality and whether the lamb-eating experience was being lost in chasing faster growth rates.

If you want to take your sheep production to the next level, come along and get involved in the next Central Murray Best Wool Best Lamb night. Central Murray Best Wool Best Lamb night is a joint venture with Western Murray Land Improvement Group (WMLIG) and funded by the NSW Government, Best Wool Best Lamb, AWI, Agriculture Vic, and WMLIG.

This article appeared in The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper, 13 March 2025.