"If you’re not measuring it, you’re not managing it" was the key message from sheep nutrition consultant Dr Bruce Farquharson at a recent Leading Sheep nutrition workshop at Bollon, in southern inland Queensland.

Leading Sheep is an initiative of Australian Wool Innovation Limited in partnership with the Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries and supported by AgForce, which targets the adoption of new technologies and practices to increase the productivity and profitability of the Queensland sheep and wool industry.

Dr Farquharson challenged producers at the workshop about lambing rates in the region and said that "just because your neighbours and most of the people in the district are achieving 60-65%, that doesn’t mean that is acceptable or profitable".

The unrealistic use of what Dr Farquharson termed the inflated "pub lambing percentages" or lambs marked over ewes in lamb, should be replaced with a true lambing percentage indicating lambs marked over total number of ewes.

"Over the years, fertility has been bred out of merinos and it is essential for merino producers to cull heavily in order to regain some lost productivity and increase lambing percentages," Dr Farquharson said.

He favours using fewer rams of higher quality because "too many rams will fight over the harem" and says his clients’ ram to ewe ratios range from 1:40 up to 1:150, with high lambing percentages still achievable at these higher ewe ratios.

Dr Farquharson has two decades of veterinary experience, including 10 years consulting to properties in Australia and New Zealand with the objective of improving production and profitability of sheep enterprises.

He told producers at the workshop to consider building themselves a portable weighing box to enable them to quickly weigh 10 sheep at a time to get an approximate indication of whether the sheep were gaining, maintaining or losing weight over time.

"Maintaining body weight is essential, and ewes must milk like dairy cows to achieve good lamb growth."

The principle of measuring also applies to pasture monitoring, and Dr Farquharson encouraged producers to develop a system that suits them to measure the amount of dry feed available to enable them to budget it and make decisions early. He advocated the use of various technologies to assess digestibility, protein and energy contents.

Seventeen sheep producers attended the workshop organised by the Leading Sheep southern inland group and feedback received from producers both at the day and afterwards was extremely positive.

The next Leading Sheep activity in the region will be a wool and sheep meat marketing day on Friday 18 November in St George.

For more information contact Tony Hamilton 07 4654 4233 or Emily Martin 07 4625 5444.