Welcome
Welcome to the Sheep Industry Business Innovation (SIBI) project newsletter.
The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (formerly the Department of Agriculture and Food) is proudly delivering this Royalties for Regions project, to support the sheep industry to capitalise on growing markets for sheep products.
If you have any suggestions for how we can improve this newsletter we’d love to hear from you at Sibi@agric.wa.gov.au.
The lambing planner goes digital
Now you can track your flock’s reproductive year at click of a button with the launch of the department’s popular lambing planner as a mobile application.
The tool, which the department has traditionally offered in paper-based format, allows you to enter a lambing date or a joining date and see the impacts of your entries on other key times in the reproductive year.
The calendar displays the current activities and stages of pregnancy or lactation with more detailed information available with a simple click.
SIBI Senior Development Officer Mandy Curnow said “It builds on the paper-based tool that has proven incredibly popular over the years, but we’ve brought it into the digital realm to improve its usability and availability to industry.”
“The app is already making waves, having been crowned a gold winner at the 2017 TECH Design Awards last month, so it’s a product the SIBI team is incredibly proud of.”
The lambing planner is free to download on Android and iOS.
The app was a collaborative effort between the SIBI project and the ASHEEP group, Esperance. The paper based version is still available by request through the lambing planner webpage, which was supported by Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) and Australian Wool Innovation (AWI).
'It's Ewe Time' is back!
The popular ‘It’s Ewe Time’ forums are making a return to WA later next month, hosted by the department together with Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) and Australian Wool Innovation (AWI).
The forums will deliver practical tools and information designed to help sheep producing businesses improve profitability and productivity, with the goal of:
- growing 10% more wool
- achieving 10% more carcase value
- producing 10% more lambs per hectare.
Department Sheep Industry Development Director Bruce Mullan said “When we talk about growing the sheep industry, people tend to get caught up in sheep numbers but it’s equally as important to grow the potential of the numbers we already have, and make sure we’re producing sheep that are productive and profitable.”
“The department and the SIBI project are committed to enabling industry to grow in value and these workshops are another way we are supporting industry to get maximum value from their sheep enterprise.”
The first forum will be held on Tuesday 22 August in Esperance followed by a Northam session on Thursday 24 August. Tickets are $35 per person.
Topics to be covered include sheepmeat and wool market outlooks, supply opportunity and challenges, managing high performing ewes to wean more lambs, animal health, feed base options and enterprise planning and structure.
The full day forums will have a clear practice-change focus and will point interested producers to many of the extension and adoption tools available through the department, MLA and AWI.
A range of expert speakers are lined up to present, including SIBI’s John Paul Collins on on-farm technology and Tamara Alexander on enterprise expansion models.
For more information and to register, visit the website or call 1800 070 099.
Western Australian sheep industry university scholarship program
Researchers and supervisors from Western Australian (WA) universities are invited to apply for WA sheep industry scholarships.
The WA sheep industry scholarship program is part of the department's and SIBI's aim to support the sheep industry to capitalise on growing markets for sheep products.
Department Sheep Industry Development Director Bruce Mullan said “The SIBI project recognises the value in supporting and encouraging individuals who wish to pursue further study by addressing key industry questions relevant to the sheep industry supply chain in WA.”
“Overall the program is about building capacity and giving students an appreciation and awareness of the industry and the sheep supply chain, including agri-business and agricultural and animal sciences.”
The program offers financial support for eligible research, including Honours, Masters and PhDs. Key funding sources for PhD scholarships may also include Meat & Livestock Australia Donor Company, Australian Wool Education Trust and University Australian Postgraduate Awards.
Applications for SIBI research scholarships are open from July 2017-March 2018 and are to be used as operating costs and stipend.
For further details on proposed topics, timelines and an application pack, please see the WA sheep industry scholarship webpage.
RamSelect: confident ram selection and purchase
Buying rams is an investment into your business, and one of the biggest challenges a sheep producer faces each year.
Next week’s SIBI-funded RamSelect workshops aim to increase your confidence in ram selection and purchase through utilising Australian Sheep Breeding Values (ASBVs) to assist you in buying the right genes for your sheep business.
This ASBV data removes the environmental effects from the equation and enables ram buyers to confidently estimate how a ram’s progeny will perform. By using ASBVs along with visual assessment of rams, purchasers can make educated decisions about the investment they are about to make.
Sheep Genetics Development Officer, Melanie Dowling, said “The performance of a ram’s progeny can’t accurately or consistently be estimated just by looking at a ram and considering its raw production figures.”
“Having additional tools on hand such as breeding values can make that decision easier, and more accurate.”
“RamSelect workshops are very hands-on, with practical advice that can help commercial producers, stock agents and many others advance their skills in ram selection using ASBVs.”
SIBI is running workshops next Tuesday 25 July (Merinos) and Wednesday 26 July (poll dorset), both from 9am-4pm at Willemenup Poll Merino Stud & Curlew Creek Poll Dorset Stud, 447 Xmas Road, Gnowangerup. The cost is $50 per participant. To register, please view the main RamSelect webpage.
The workshops demonstrate how to use figures from MERINOSELECT and LAMBPLAN in conjunction with visual cues to help select rams that will breed the best progeny for your business.
Melanie is also available to run ASBV refresher workshops for stud clients in the lead up to ram field day season.
For further information on these workshops, email melanie.dowling@agric.wa.gov.au. Read more about Melanie below in the staff profile article.
Dry ageing: a value adding opportunity for the WA sheep industry?
To answer this question, SIBI has initiated a new research project in partnership with Meat & Livestock Australia’s (MLA) Donor Company.
Tried and tested in the beef industry, dry ageing has the potential to increase the value of sheepmeat particularly in adult animals by improving both tenderness and flavour. This could be a useful alternative for WA, where the flock is predominantly Merino based and finishing animals as lambs can be difficult.
During ageing, enzymes involved in the turnover of protein in the muscle of live animals continue to break down protein structures after death and this has a tenderising effect on meat. When done in the presence of air under controlled conditions of temperature and humidity, the process is known as ‘dry ageing’ (conversely, when done in vacuum bags it is known as ‘wet ageing’).
The dry ageing process usually involves extending the ageing period as well, from the standard five days recommended for lamb meat under the Meat Standards Australia grading system, to a period of 21-35 days.
A recent proof of concept study conducted in South Australia, funded by MLA, found that lamb meat responded to dry ageing in a manner resembling that for beef.
Tenderness was either better or the same for dry aged compared to wet aged meat and this occurred for all three primal cuts (legs, loins and shoulder from six lambs). Consumers perceived positive flavour effects, noting an increase in ‘roasted’ and ‘butter’ flavours and a decrease in ‘bloodiness’ and ‘metallic’ type flavours for dry aged compared to wet aged lamb meat.
One drawback with dry ageing in an economic sense is an increased yield loss and in the MLA study this loss was about 10% after trimming.
Another is that exporting dry aged meat is problematic under current regulations. Preliminary work has shown that the potential share may be less than 10% of the market. However, this could still represent a significant volume of meat in some overseas markets, for example the value of dry aged beef in the USA is currently in the order of $1billion and the retail price 2-4 times that of fresh meat.
SIBI Senior Research Officer Robin Jacob said “SIBI’s planned research, in collaboration with the University of Melbourne, will build on the proof of concept study and will involve WA sheep producers and processors.”
“The research will investigate insights for domestic and international markets, optimal ageing periods to improve consumer appeal and minimise yield loss, chef engagement to drive premium food service applications as well as regulatory requirements for local and export markets.”
Further updates on the research will be provided in future SIBI communications. Dr Robin Jacob is leading SIBI’s involvement in the research. You can get in contact with Robin by emailing robin.jacob@agric.wa.gov.au.
Meet the team: Development Officer Melanie Dowling
Each edition, we will introduce you to a different member of our SIBI team.
Melanie grew up on a mixed farm located west of Katanning, always fostering a passion for animals and participating in any sheep work around the farm. She was also heavily involved in equestrian activities from mustering sheep through to competing around the state in eventing.
“I headed to boarding school in Perth and at the end of year 12 it was very evident to me that I wanted to return to a regional area” Melanie explained.
Melanie enrolled in Agricultural Science at the University of Western Australia (1999–2002). Throughout her studies, her passion for sheep grew and she started to narrow her field into anything sheep related; nutrition, genetics and wool production. In her 4th year honours project she worked closely with Dr Tony Schlick, CSIRO, looking into breeding sheep with less dust in wool. This sparked a passion for research and at the completion of her degree she started work at the Department of Agriculture in Katanning as a research officer.
From 2003 till 2008 Melanie was involved with wool research on the Katanning resource flock including felting properties, dust/suint/wax relationships, and breeding for fabric comfort properties. She also worked on the wool supply chain and used some of our unique WA characteristics to create new markets for WA wool.
Melanie left DAFWA in 2008 to start a family and now has three children: Kimberley aged 9, Kasey aged 7 and Lane aged 6. Throughout these years of raising her young children, she supported her husband in running an electrical retail, Telstra dealership and IT business.
“Throughout the 10 years of running our business we saw the best and worst of the industry. We learned to cope through some very hard financial years which has given me an appreciation for producers in a dry year like the one we are currently having. Our business taught me staff management skills, team building skills, customer service skills, financial planning and a general appreciation of the blood, sweat and tears that go into running a small business. These life lessons will never be forgotten.”
Melanie recently returned to the department as a sheep development officer in Katanning, to further her love for agriculture.
“Armed with some more mature life skills, my place in the Increasing Business and Technical Skills sub project of SIBI is a good fit for me. My main role is to increase the adoption of genetic technologies, particularly ASBVs, to increase the rate of genetic gain in our state flock, assisting our efforts to double the value of the sheep industry by 2025.”
Melanie helps co-ordinate workshops to help producers define breeding objectives and understand how to use ASBVs effectively, and is available to run RamPower analyses for producers interested in benchmarking certain flocks and is also able to assist producers with uploading data into Sheep Genetics.
To contact Melanie, email melanie.dowling@agric.wa.gov.au.