Head Shepherd

This episode comes from our Productivity & Profitability podcast, produced in partnership with Meat & Livestock Australia.
How do you breed a lamb that consistently delivers a better eating experience?
For decades, sheep producers have been selecting for traits they could easily measure, including growth, fertility and lean meat yield. But eating quality has remained far more difficult to quantify, despite being one of the biggest drivers of consumer satisfaction and long-term demand.
On this episode, Mark chats with David Packer, Program Manager – CarcaseValue at Meat & Livestock Australia, to explore how advances in meat science are changing that.
Whether you're interested in genetics, processing, meat science or producing lambs that better meet consumer expectations, this episode shows just how rapidly objective carcase measurement is reshaping sheep breeding.

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.

Thanks to our sponsors at MSD Animal Health and Allflex, Heiniger Australia and New Zealand, and ProWay Livestock Equipment. Please consider them when making product choices, as they are instrumental in enabling us to bring you this podcast each week.

Check out the MSD range HERE
Check out Allflex products HERE
Check out Heiniger's product range HERE
Check out ProWay's product range HERE

Most breeders pick one thing to improve. Peter Blackwood picked several. When he and his wife Claire took over a Corriedale stud in 2006, they committed to lifting fertility, carcass shape and wool fineness - all at once - by using ASBVs.
Two decades later, they've lifted lambing from 110% to 150%, and reduced micron from 28 to 22-24. Peter also says his sheep are shorter and stockier, with better shape and cleaner points, including bare heads. Apparently 10 years on the crutching trailers will do that to a farmer! 
The Performance Corriedale Group, which Peter helped found, conducted a three-year eating quality trial on more than 700 lambs, developing the first genomic tools to predict meat quality in Corriedales, which, as it turned out, had higher intramuscular fat on average than industry benchmarks at 4.6% and some lambs even reaching above 10% IMF.
Peter says he sees the Corriedale as an 'all-rounder' breed rather than a 'dual-purpose' breed. After 20 years of breeding for good structure, fertility, wool and carcase, Peter now sees an opportunity for the Corriedale in modern prime lamb systems, particularly where producers can make the wool pay for the sheep enterprise and let the lambs carry the remaining costs. 
Tune in to hear how Peter and Claire proved you don't have to pick between traits. You can breed a sheep that does fertility, carcass and wool well, all at the same time.
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.

Thanks to our sponsors at MSD Animal Health and Allflex, Heiniger Australia and New Zealand, and ProWay Livestock Equipment. Please consider them when making product choices, as they are instrumental in enabling us to bring you this podcast each week.

Check out the MSD range HERE
Check out Allflex products HERE
Check out Heiniger's product range HERE
Check out ProWay's product range HERE

Looking to change your Merino genetics? What actually happens when you switch types? For our guest this week, Dom Hallam, it started with his parents.
Coming from a traditional fine wool background, they began looking for something different, eventually bringing sheep from New England into their flock. The change was rapid, and before long the sheep looked very different. His parents' willingness to try something new eventually led them into breeding their own rams and establishing the Cooee Merino stud. 
A few years ago, Dom came across a type of Merino that caught his attention when 'browsing sheep on the internet', as one does. Those sheep were Konsortium Merinos. Originally from South Africa, they have been bred in Australia to become a very fertile, wrinkle-free Merino with great meat attributes. Dom travelled to see the sheep and decided he was bringing some home with him. Tune in to see how they've performed and how he's planning to cross them with his original flock. 
Before he returned to the family farm, Dom spent time in the US studying horse dentistry. What he learnt about skull structure and dentition has stayed with him, and he now considers those same principles when breeding sheep. He has some unique insights into issues such as undershot jaws. 
For Dom, the interesting part of breeding is that there is always another question to ask and another change to make. The best advice he learnt from his parents? 'You can't change unless you change.'
Ferg is out and about on the road over the coming weeks. Catch him at the following events: 
28 August – Precision, productivity and profit (workshop)
8 September – Pooginook Poll Merino open day
9 September – Mumblebone open day
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.

Thanks to our sponsors at MSD Animal Health and Allflex, Heiniger Australia and New Zealand, and ProWay Livestock Equipment. Please consider them when making product choices, as they are instrumental in enabling us to bring you this podcast each week.

Check out the MSD range HERE
Check out Allflex products HERE
Check out Heiniger's product range HERE
Check out ProWay's product range HERE

What is a trait actually worth to a farming business?
Ferg has spent much of his career talking about the value of genetics, but it hasn't always been easy to put that value into real dollar terms that apply to individual farming businesses.
In this episode, Ferg explains how we plan to work out the dollar value of genetic performance with the use of our new tool, neXtProfit. 
Ferg explains that it's not as simple as putting a price on an extra lamb or another kilogram of wool, because each change has a whole range of small on-farm impacts. For example, the extra feed and pasture consumed by that additional animal, and the flow-on effects on labour and farm management; or the extra chemical and labour required to manage a daggier animal. 
Tune in to hear how we're planning on helping farmers put a dollar value on genetic change. 
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.

Thanks to our sponsors at MSD Animal Health and Allflex, Heiniger Australia and New Zealand, and ProWay Livestock Equipment. Please consider them when making product choices, as they are instrumental in enabling us to bring you this podcast each week.

Check out the MSD range HERE
Check out Allflex products HERE
Check out Heiniger's product range HERE
Check out ProWay's product range HERE

What's the difference between a sheep that looks "right" and a sheep that breeds "right"? Jonno Hicks from Hannaton Poll Merinos and White Suffolks, reckons he's finally found the answer.
In this week's episode, Jonno talks through his shift from visual assessment to genomics and data-driven breeding, and why the first years weren't the easiest- despite employing a "guy in New Zealand he heard on a podcast". 
At Hannaton, they now record fleece attributes, carcass traits, structural traits and much more, and make the most of that data by using genomics and neXtgen Agri indices to balance progress across all of them. 
Tune in to hear a great yarn between two people who spend way too much time thinking about sheep genetics.
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.

Thanks to our sponsors at MSD Animal Health and Allflex, Heiniger Australia and New Zealand, and ProWay Livestock Equipment. Please consider them when making product choices, as they are instrumental in enabling us to bring you this podcast each week.

Check out the MSD range HERE
Check out Allflex products HERE
Check out Heiniger's product range HERE
Check out ProWay's product range HERE