So welcome to the sheep show podcast and here with me today is one of these people who I'm sure you're all dying to meet. His name is Nick Lawrence. Now let me tell you a little bit about Nick. Nick went to the ag school in Adelaide herb Ray so some of you might might be be aware of that that particular school, and he started to breed shape in year 11 at school. He's a little bit older than that now. Yep. And after after leaving school, he started his own Suffolk stud called Pinnacle start and Nick lives in border town in South Australia, so he'd been breeding Suffolk since 1996 and white Suffolk since 2009. And as well as breeding sheep Nikki is a very sought after jobs. Nick has had the pleasure of judging some of my sheep. So that's where I met Nick. And doing a lot of lot of country shows. And also Nick, if he's not involved in the sheep industry enough, runs a pregnancy scanning, muscle scanning, and lamb marking business as well called Live scan. So welcome, Nick. Thanks for joining us on the sheep show podcast. You're welcome. Now, Nick has very interesting topic for us in this particular episode, and that is around structural correctness versus performance of shape and trying to get the balancing act between the two. So let's just start off with the very beginning obviousness the shapes podcast are very broad. So Nick, when you say structural correctness what what exactly do you mean by structural correctness in shape
Nick Lawrence :when I'm when I'm looking at it See, from the ground up, it's got to have a, it's got to have a purpose, it's got to be able to eat and reproduce and do those things effectively for a long period of time. So performances, to me is judged more on more than just growth, right, more than just muscle more than just walk up. It's also it's also judged on the right longevity of animals as well, and how long and how effectively you can do it for. So there's a lot of aspects that go into performance. And as far as I'm concerned, and structure predicts that they're connected together. There's no point having an animal that is a super performer that can only do it for a very short period of time. So you've got to be able to make that added value by making the animal last as long as possible. So that's what I'm trying to instill on my sheep. Anyone breed those shapes? Yeah.
Jill Noble :So So what happens when When we have animals that aren't structurally correct, what sort of problems we get?
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, so if you've got an animal that's so if we start from the ground up when I'm breeding the sheep, I'm looking at faith to start with. So if they've got a cover a lot of distance, they're gonna have good sand fate, and depending on your breed the right color of fates, because that can affect affect them a lot on whether if they've got black feet or higher, hilly top a breed of sheep have a tendency to have slightly better fate if they've got that fate. And by having those things correct from the ground up, going up to pastors being straight so that they have not down on their pastors and they don't grow feet in either direction. And then you're gonna have strength, you can in bones gonna have strength, so that all these structural things as the shape goes up, and they all add up together to have an animal the loss, the shape can break down in many areas usually stopped From the Ground Up is where they break down first. So you've got to have a good healthy animal, good top line, and a good straight top line to hang meat off. And but all those other aspects have to come together, the shoulders got to be set correctly, so that you've got an animal with a narrower shoulder, and then its hips so that so that walks correctly in its gait. And so that when it's at full gallop, its legs don't hit together. If it's being chased by something, it's got a full gallop is that if they're not correctly put together, the back and front legs don't, don't eat this one properly and they'll end up hitting each other. And if they're bred correctly, they'd like the front leg should go in between the backlinks when they're at full gallop, so it's no different to any course cow anything. They're gonna have that wedge shape. I've got to have the right length of neck. They've got to have the right type of head for your breed as well as great standards. All those things come together to make a correct animal. And when we start chasing performance side of things, sometimes we make those animals out of balance. So they're too big in one area or too long in one area. And all of a sudden you start changing the shape and you end up having a sheet that's out of balance and and probably not going to last as long as an animal that's got that balance that we're looking for.
Jill Noble :So it's almost like it's a short term gain, but actually doesn't count there for the for the longevity of the of the breed
Unknown Speaker :animals.
Unknown Speaker :Exactly. When I'm looking at, let's say, if we're looking at a rim quite often when I'm going out and I do pregnancy scanning, I'll have people that I come across that say certain animals are breaking down, and they'll break down and say year three, year four as I ran this Breaking down and not being able to be put out with us because perhaps they were chased in one direction to push them in performance wise to make them grow so much faster. But at the end of the day, if they're not, if they're not putting together properly, you're not getting that performance over a decent period of time to make those animals worthwhile financially for people to keep buying. And when you go into when you go into breeding females, it's even more important because they you want them to last 678 years. If they're only lasting four or five, six years, there's a financial deficit there, that's that might outweigh that performance you're getting from the extra growth and other things that you're chasing. Mm hmm.
Jill Noble :And how much of that could be those short term gains that actually result in long term problems, how many of money with those would be genetic in terms of would there be then if we breed from those, so It's about animals would they be passed on?
Unknown Speaker :genetic. So sometimes I wouldn't say where we're not aiming to put things in to shape like bad pesticides or any of that. But if it's not, if it's not at the forefront of our focus, if the if the wedge shape isn't forefront of your focus, when you're breeding those animals, if it gets ingrained into your into your pedigrees, and then it keeps cropping up, it's not something it's going to keep coming. You can't correct it in one cross. It's going to keep coming back. And you're going to end up with animals that don't necessarily make that structural structural map that we're trying to put into all of our shape to make them last for longevity. So I just think the performance side of things needs to come in gradually if you make to bigger leap and don't buy the right animal to Increasing performance you can very quickly undo all the good work you've done. And that's why whenever I'm bringing something new in I test them i don't i wouldn't give a I wouldn't give an animal too many too many years in its first season or even in a before you've tested it out because sometimes when you're chasing that performance that it doesn't always breed what it looks like. And you need to know the background you need to know pedigrees and it's it's slightly different to breeding commercial shape reading breeding stud shapes, different game altogether. Yeah.
Jill Noble :Yeah, I mean, I guess if the terminal the terminal is you know, these are the things don't matter so much.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, yet true. But even with the terminal greatest step, but like I said, the Rams are gonna last five, six and seven years. If they lasting three years, you might start to find that breeders will go elsewhere. If they haven't got that structure, correct. If you've got shoulder placement, that's incorrect. Correct. You've got shoulders that are more forward and create a shortening of that neck area when when the birthing of lambs occurs, that the heads not in the right place so displaces the legs. When they go to come out, the legs aren't in the right place these the heads too far back, it ends up putting one leg behind and you get dystopia or you get stuck because because the heads too big and it's coming out in the wrong place, all those things add up to come together to make an easy birthing. Easy care sort of animal.
Jill Noble :Yeah. Wow. So just going back to that wedge shape that you mentioned, how come that wedge shape is so important when we're when we're breeding sheep?
Unknown Speaker :Well, with it with the chest of the animal and needs to be when you look at the hind end, want that hind muscle that comes down to that to hopefully be lower than what the chest is at the front, because otherwise you were just in it. It's a wedge over the top of the animal. And it's a wedge looking from the side of the animal, which the chest doesn't want to be too deep. Because when you look at that lamb, all those measurements correlate. So if an animal's head is a certain size and shape, it's when it's pins, its birthing canal all correlates to that. And if you've got an animal that's out of balance, you're going to have more birthing problems, you're going to have all these other sorts of strange things that happen like feet wearing and not direction, you get long, long toes because their leg placement isn't correct. They're passing down correct. And you'll end up with shapes that need their fate trimmed all the time. And that sort of problem and it's not a it's not a thing that we need in our industry. So we need to sort of curb that if we can.
Jill Noble :So really interesting. So really, again, regardless of whether it's terminal or not, where we're breeding animals, we're wanting to have that ease of lamb both both in terms of process as shepherds but also the animal that the itself.
Unknown Speaker :Yes, yep. And I can see and people chase people are chasing performance, I am chasing performance. And I'm always looking for an animal that's got that balance of performance figures to go with it. So that you've got some sort of backup that when you bring it into your flock, then it's not going to bring the performance that you already have, and enlarge it wants to be the same or higher. So the first thing like breeding tool that you need is a set of scales is the first thing that you work on for performance. It's a basic rule to know how many grams per day certain animals are putting on so you can work out which ones are better performing animals, and allowing for them being twins to is the other is the other factor otherwise, you just end up on breeding from old single round lands and then fertility fertility. It can be a performance traced thing as well. And the more lamps you have, the more profitable you can be. So that's something to be looked at as well.
Jill Noble :One of the challenges with breeding from from single round lambs.
Unknown Speaker :And don't get me wrong, there's a lot of people that sell a lot of stuffed animals that are single remnants, and there's nothing wrong with that. It doesn't mean that they won't have a large number of twins. But effectively your females that come from a line from a male that is a twin bearing animal, those females are then more likely to ovulate more. So the daughters of a twin during ram are more likely to populate, so you're going to end up with higher percentages from twin varying Rams. Having said that, if you're a terminal grader and all your lambs are getting their heads chopped off, they don't make the use of you like more. Use going the other way as much as they Going to, and it's the actual female progeny from there and so your, your, your Marino RAMs, your board, Lester RAMs, and yourself replacing RAMs, for flocks like yourselves that have got that will replace their own RAMs, all those all those maternal lines and chasing winning Rams is going to be an advantage. And I see it all the time with your performance with my practicing, that people that chase those twins, Chase gene technology, like UberX, all the genes are going to end up getting massive influxes of extra lambs. And whether you keep those alive that comes down to your management. At the end of the day, if the fetus is out there, you can't get a number. So that's where performance comes in on the fertility side.
Jill Noble :Yeah, great. Thank you. I think it's, it's really interesting just to sort of explore these things. I know, some of the earlier podcasts. We've touched on this in terms of how much is genetic versus environmental and, and that really again, it's it's have a bit of a balance too. So we've
Unknown Speaker :got environmental flush to like to get used to cycle environment brings a huge plays a huge role in getting them to flush properly and get those extra obligations and and express the performance in the genes. If you don't give them the right circumstances the genes aren't gonna perform anyway.
Jill Noble :Yeah, that's it. That's exactly it. So you got to create that environment to allow that. Whatever is there that roll genetic potential to express itself? Yeah. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about these performance measures. You've mentioned quite a few there already. So which ones do we do we actually need to consider which ones are ones worth worth? us thinking about?
Unknown Speaker :And we if we're starting from a land, lambs, being born, a lot of people chase birthweight. I'm a big believer that as long as you Don't have super high birth weights and your birth weights, it's more a, like I said, a structural problem. If you have to chase tiny birth weights to get your lambs set up, you probably haven't gotten shoulders set correctly on your size. And you might be chasing muscles. So that may it might mean that you want a thick out style of animal to put that muscle on. But to me, if you've got the right wedge shape, your birth weights aren't necessarily going to be as big issue. But you know, find more Merino breeders that are putting terminal size over the top of some of the cow ears, they definitely want to have sheep with low birth weights. And that's one performance thing. Probably your performance when you're testing animals, so your fertility of your animals that needs to be accountable, especially in the commercial sense and you need to Keep track of all your dry sheep so that you know what's happening with your dry animals that they're not just becoming an irrelevant number that keeps coming back into the system you actually discarding those after a reasonable amount of time having been joined Yeah, I've got people you know, joining no nine month old you lambs commercially getting really good results even today I was doing you lambs scanning new lambs and then up to around 80% take in you lambs that are seven to nine months of joining so to get that information on which loop you lambs have got that facility and then some of those animals that aren't in lamb as eaten as you lambs are getting passed on they're not genetically good enough to perform for facility so they're being sold and at the moment with The market the way it is, you only want to keep your best performing animals to get more out of every blade of grass. The next thing and this is more stud orientated is your performance recording systems. Now we have to in Australia and we have stock scan, and we have land planning on the land plan scanner as far as registered land plan scanner, but I think both systems have a lot of mirror. Performance recording for birthweight as I've mentioned number of lambs wanes when you put pedigree in very important so in Lw on your land plan, very underrated trait. people probably don't look at enough the fella that has or the fellow lady that has the most lambs on the brand end of the dice probably in the ballpark and making the most money. So that's the name of the game and some people's operations to make the most money. So you want to capitalize on your number of years versus your number of lands Wayne, so no W is a very hazy trait to chase.
Jill Noble :Because what it does just help couples understand what does that mean? what's the what's that acronym? Me?
Unknown Speaker :Say it what lane plan does it'll, it'll go through your information and find out how many use joins the number of lambs waned and give you a figure and tell you which lines of performance size will give you the more well supposedly give you a better advantage to getting number of lambs on the ground live. So that that gives you a genetic build up over time with your land plane. So that's, that's one thing to chase. And another thing and especially just starting out just weighing your animal so you know, performing at which are you performing animals and splitting them if you can. It's very hard to do. In a commercial sense for splitting them if you can into singles and twins, because you can, a lot of the time, end up selling animals in especially commercially, let's say visually selected because that was smaller as yearlings that are smaller because they were twins, but they're actually probably a higher performing animal. So a lot of those shapes sometimes if they're not recorded, if the data is not recorded, they end up getting sent out the door and sent to someone else's place, and probably do a pretty good job for them while you keep all your large single bearing single lambs, which, once again, that doesn't help with your performance. It's something to bear in mind too, especially if you can split your mobs into singles and twins. So you can identify all your lambs at least we're born as twins, so that you can hopefully select your better names from that mob to give you give you that performance And your eye muscle and back fat that we do for land plane maternally and fat on your maternal is very, very important. That's measured well because if if you use under tough conditions they have to get conditioned back on them to get back in lamb again, the faster they do that the better they do that while they milk. The more embryos they produce, the more productive you probably can make something that can be traced and your muscle ometer on a on a terminal ram muscle and fat is another thing that we need to be looking at. And of course with all your all your wall traits on Marino's profit in the wall and your wall in the wall cuts and we need to know all that information. So there's there's Marina, select that there to help you do that. That also has grown writes a lot more Merino people chasing growth and chasing fat and muscle chasing fertility so it's it's coming along and Marino's are chasing that out too so that we can actually go out now and selects Marino's for growth not just doing it selecting Rams that have had the most in the feed bucket if you can actually get some performance data on them start selecting animals and the weight gains on and you've got tangible data to work with. And yeah it's and that's that's a big step that's going forward in the marina is the marina select so that's going great guns at the minute and picking up well I'm picking up clients left right and center with a Marino's you guys they take it on board. So more and more. It's fabulous.
Jill Noble :It's a few little things I'd like to ask Justin on some of the things you've mentioned there. So birthweight, what what sort of range, if we are weighing our Are lambs? And what's the range? Do you would you like to see and I know it's gonna be different for for singles and twins, but just to give range
Unknown Speaker :myself and I'd like to see a single single lamb in the range of five to six and a half kilos. And that's indicative of my breed. And we're probably not you're not going to do that out of a Merino you is not the same because the maternal it, everyone looks at it as. So I'm a pure I'm breeding pure animals of one grade when we go across the maternal side of it will actually bring that weight down. So the Merino USADA will actually bring that birth weight down in accordance with what he has got in her genetic as well because the family passes on half of that genetic gain. So, for that, that's about the weights you'd want to see with a twin And I'm talking with my wife suffix or suffix I want to say them in range of four kilos to five is pretty normal. And I would say any given the year you sort of start to know whether when they start lambing and how much feed they've got in front of them like this year, we've we're fairly far forward. I'd expect most of those ranges to be possibly half a kilo up, but it depends on your area and what you figure animals pre lambing as well but with the grain kick around and the protein that will be around this that should be up this year, I'd imagine. Yeah.
Jill Noble :Well, thank you, and the muscle in the Rams Then how come that's so important when you're scanning for that muscle?
Unknown Speaker :So I muscle depth, we're looking to increase our muscle depth and hopefully, increase yield from our lands. So if you've got if you've got land yielding somewhere between the vicinity of 42 to 48% dress carcass weights, if you then increase your muscle depth and increase your mass massive muscle over the body of the animal that half of that gets passed on when you do a cross. So that will increase in turn, increase your percentages stressing percentages, and, and then put actually put weight into the animal where it's cost effective, rather than ending up on the floor of the network. So that actually ends up in the carpet. So that's what we want. That's what we're aiming to do with that.
Jill Noble :Yeah. And that that depth is, is is genetically transferable
Unknown Speaker :is it's of course you've got to take into account when you to lots of gene sequences come to like to talk to James come together. It's not always going to go in your favor. Just because you bought the most muscley Ram doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to get all of your lambs with super muscle. But if you don't have the genes there, you can't make the gains. So, yeah, genetically and statistically, you're going to end up better off having those deeper muscle Rams. And the same goes for fat and that fat is a subjective thing as to how much do we want to send them to make works and how much do they cut off and not get paid, we don't get paid for. So depending on your area, you've got to select your fat a little bit more carefully. Beautiful, thank
Jill Noble :you. What other performance measures might there be?
Unknown Speaker :Ah, now we're going we're starting to go into different things, especially with land plans and Gene tracing, and all that sort of thing and intramuscular fat in certain in the mate for tenderness and taste shear force for the tenderness of mate. They're testing that now. And you're getting information back on land plan for that data, and whether or not we ever get paid for it, I don't know. I don't know whether it's we're going to get paid for that. But if we don't keep our eye on that ball, and we end up just pushing more performance, more muscle more, there's more that we can end up with turning and meet from what we have into a less tender, more portlets a pork like the way it cooks, and possibly that that's less palatable the way we cook it now. So we don't want to change what we've got. We've got a very high intramuscular fat, easy to cook, and good tasting meat. We don't want that to change. So it's just something to keep an eye on. I'm not not saying that we should be necessarily putting that at the forefront of everything. We should be. Going, because at the end of the day, we get paid for tax white. But if we want to sell high end products and be in that, in that realm, we need to keep an eye on things.
Jill Noble :So you've given us a good indication there of some of the structural correctness elements, the performance measures. So,
Unknown Speaker :which is more important?
Unknown Speaker :Um, well, for myself, I always put structural credit correctness first. I've probably been taught that way. And I don't want to be replaced by a computer to tell me, which Rams I should be putting which years, but at the end of the day, there is some method of performance that can be used in that in that regard. I don't use it myself. Mainly because I think it gets You can start getting too carried away to the enth degree with something. And the thing with it is sometimes your performance of your animals. Everyone knows their lowest performing animal in the flock. It's working out where your averages and whether you're going forward. And that probably is more important to me than knowing I can I can visually see, which is my worst animal. I just need to work out whether my average is getting better. And that's that's where I'm pushing my performances to getting the average of my flock better. Not necessarily pushing it to the envelope to yet at the detriment of my structural corrects. And braid talk.
Jill Noble :Yeah, that Oh, that tastes as you say as well. Yep.
Unknown Speaker :Yep. There's the end the breed the performance versus correctness and bred type of your animals. If we all just chase performance to the answer. Great. I think we'd end up overwriting the same sheet. And that's not what I'm about. So I use it as part of my brain to select which Rams within my own flock I'm going to continue using. But I think if you don't have that structure correct to begin with, it can all fall in a heap fairly quickly if you don't keep an eye on that.
Jill Noble :So with that, Ben, if we're talking then within a breed and perhaps should we be comparing performance measures within breeds if that makes sense?
Unknown Speaker :So you're set you're saying comparing animals within braid against each other from places? Yep, so land plan. Land plan does that. They give you a comparison of your sheep compared to other people see across the nation. To do that you need to have link size, which means that if you've got a link side that's used heavily Cross across a breed and and then you've got that in your drop through AI through whether you've purchased the RAM, whatever. And if you can get those to drop at the same time as your home read rooms that gives you a comparison and they try and if you've got the right amount of lambs born within a certain period, you can then compare yours against other sheep across the nation. So it doesn't it doesn't have to do that. But at the same time, it doesn't always doesn't always necessarily give you that in one go. So if you're in the first year you compare you don't always get a direct a direct performance in one go it might your home ran might jump up on figures a little bit, and then the next year, we want to jump up again. It's not gonna make it correct in one guy named enough data on animals to make it make it relevant. So say like with the animals you bring in from New Zealand like I have, they don't have any land plan data. So in the Suffolk breed, some of the New Zealand Rams are some of the best performing animals on land plan some of them but the thing with it is they couldn't have been to start with because they're not even born here. They don't have land planning New Zealand. So you had to bring in outside genetics that the system doesn't know anything about. Yeah, so to do that, you need to have faith in them over time that they're going to get better. So you've got enough information to prepare correctly.
Jill Noble :Wow. You mentioned earlier on that with when we look at the data and the performance measures, we can go too far. You know, we can try and achieve too much too soon. So so what what do you think what are some of the Ask was pitfalls or traps Perhaps
Unknown Speaker :I'm
Unknown Speaker :probably probably I described them as Frankenstein sheep.
Unknown Speaker :So, you'll see an animal that stands out especially when you're in a lineup with a lot of, let's say people's top shape and and you get to see them and then then they don't look the same because their shoulders not set right or, or they've got a dip in the dip behind their shoulder and this especially make braids where there's no there's Shawn and there's no wall covering them up to even no height at all. And a deep behind the shoulder because the shoulders aren't set correctly or they've got too much width in the front and they don't have a wedge shape. It stands out very quickly and it kind of sometimes it it still stay in your mind and animal that's incorrect will stand my mind for a lot longer than an animal so that I like it. Like sort of like bad news travels fast. So playing and and it does get around people see it and they go, Oh, what's going on there? right and that's what can happen very quickly if you flip focus completely on performance. And you can breed an animal that yes grows very fast, may have the highest growth rate might have the best facts might have fantastic IMF figures and and shear force figures. But if you don't select for those animals to have, like the lasting performance from the structure, then it can it can happen very, very quickly happened in one cross because you've, you've used those high animals, sometimes it's you're much better off using an animal that is several years older has been tried and tested. And you know what the project is going to look like because you've seen a number of them and seeing why Animal from one side doesn't give you a picture of what he's going to breed necessarily. So, and the thing with performance is you get a mixed pedigree. So if you are chasing performance, often you're going to have a mixed pedigree because you're chasing a number to make growth, fat, whatever better. And you bring those two pedigrees together to chase having the highest number of animal possible performance. But you sometimes don't have a real idea because you're bringing in new genetics from two different sides or from keep doing it to chase that number. You don't have a good idea of what the grandparents and great grandparents are like, and you're not breeding a line of shape. You're breeding an out cross shape that's got a lot of different genetics in them. And breeding a line of sheep is sometimes more important than breeding the one freak. That's the best I'd rather breed a consistent line that are useful.
Jill Noble :Okay, so so in that breeding that line, you're, you're getting all the benefits
Unknown Speaker :in the long term in your flock. Well, that's what
Unknown Speaker :I was going to talk a bit of it line breeding of sheep is something that interests me a lot. It's something I've only just started doing with my own sheep. I've had a few mentors of the years, what's the way that they class the sheep and the way they do the joinings. And a lot of people buy animals to complement what may be lacking in their flock. I'm not saying that's the wrong thing to do, but it's a gradual process and I think you want to make too much change too fast, but I'm aligning check that are alike is probably a lot faster way to go. Get somewhere. So if you've got animals that are predominantly shorter legged, thicker sorts of sheep that tend to be stuck a lamb type animals, that they're going to turn a lamb off, that's got plenty of shaping it early, well, I wouldn't then go and join that you will that ran to the opposite to try and get something in the middle because that's where that what I'm saying is like a Franken shake type of thing it's going to throw to all all corners of the genetics because it's not genetically alike because you've joined two totally different animals. So now I basically breed an animal for a Sakhalin I'll, I'll focus on that. And those use will go with a ram that is focused on breeding, soccer, genetics, and then I have a more a taller sort of line for your export animals that want to then go into stubbles and grow out to a bigger Wait, they need to not put on too much fat too early, they need to get bigger, they stretch out longer, and they go to the heavyweight classes, and then going over and eating stumbles out over the summer. And those are the sorts of animals that they're two different kills a fish like that you're not going to get the two to do the same job effectively. Like I said before, if you use the sucker ram to breed the export animal, you're going to end up with more waste, because he's going to go to fat quicker. So yeah, you have to know what you're doing with that sort of performance data to make it work for you rather than against you.
Jill Noble :And in email, all of that sort of selection. And that joining sort of choice that you're, you're talking about how much of that is visual that you're making a visual assessment and how much of it is on the performance data.
Unknown Speaker :And the performance data is telling you it will also tell you over time, what those use tendencies are So her fingers like when do you flock to you that three or four years old has had a number of lambs probably to a number of different sites. So it will actually reflect what her genetics then it her genetic trend will change with her lands. So she consistently produces fatter, early maturing muscley or top of lambs, it will show in the data from her lens and that data then goes back and reflects and changes that it also reflects as a mob of its siblings will change the size data. So the data on the soil will change according to what his progeny do. So that then makes your accuracy of your size and the accuracy of your youth flock more correct and more valuable to you because I think with introducing new genetics that aren't on land plant already It's it's a guessing game as to what you've got until you actually have read it and know after a couple of years, so it's a Yeah, it's a hard thing to chase when you bring in new, new new genetics you need to have Yeah, that's why I do it gradually, rather than bang, spend a whole lot of money and have a whole lot of shoot, that might be the heads chopped off.
Jill Noble :Yeah, well, this is it, and then us so you've lost all that game that you've been working on?
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, we were talking about performance. When it comes confessional side of things. Farmers are going to want performance. So you don't want to have a whole lot of structurally correct sheet that have no performance or no data whatsoever. Because if they if that's the case, once they go and do their lifetime you management, they go and do their courses. And they get told this is what you need to be learning If you don't offer it to them if you don't give them any performance data, then they're going to either question why or they're going to go and find someone that does so it's sort of it's a double edged sword if you don't have the data there's no point having the the best looking shape if you don't have the people to come and buy on so that's why I think you need both these guys Wow. Wow, that's Yeah,
Jill Noble :quite quite incredible. So So is this why it would be better for you or for a breeder to buy Rams for you we'll talk about rounds here but by rounds from from one breeder to get that consistency in line is that without being
Unknown Speaker :Well, yeah, I think whether you can then when you go to auction, sometimes you don't end up with enough because everyone's got a budget. But if you can, the actual buying of the ranch is cheap, cheap part of the process if you have to pay a little extra to get what you want. And at the end of the day, that actually if you're putting out second rate Rams because because you're on a tighter budget, that down the track, over 567 years if those Rams lasts that long, that money is really not it's nothing over over per animal. It's worth paying the extra couple hundred dollars to get what you're after, and chase the right traits. So spending the money on the right genetics is always worth it, especially if you're putting the money in the back end and actually feeding the animals correctly and doing all the things right and six in one and drenching and pre lamb crunching and getting them all how they should be ready for lambing the Rams on part of it is really the cheap it
Jill Noble :is yeah, it's it's really interesting, isn't it and a lot of people just Think about you're trying to get the cheapest route possible but ironically that that's, you know, that takes you away from what you're trying to do.
Unknown Speaker :Well, he saw he saw I could possibly produce five to 700 lambs over his lifetime so when you take that as $1 a head value if you had to give $2 out of every land and they ended up being better lambs and more marketable, it's it's really
Unknown Speaker :a no brainer. Buy the right RAMs,
Jill Noble :and talking about Ben and a lot of people think, okay, I've used my ram for two years in a row, I need a new one. What do you think about that?
Unknown Speaker :Have you know, the longevity of your RAM, if you only caping for two years, like that to me, I and this, I'm a critic of some performance. I've been to workshops where they're telling me unit Genetic turnover so I should be using the sons of rams that I've bought. And that's that's in turn that's probably true. But I've got Rams and I have had some, you know put even Rams off purchase that ended up being nine years old and I'm still using them back over, you know wine bread situation back over there granddaughters, which is about as close as you want to go in that situation. And to get that like keep that mind going as pure as possible. So you can you need to be able to know the longevity of your AMS. If you turn all your stuff names over in two to three years and they end up off the farm. You really don't know how long they live. And that's a that's an untraceable bit of information. If you don't have Rams that you keep for longer than that.
Unknown Speaker :lost. It's nice to use new Rams every year. Sometimes reliables, more important Yeah. Yeah,
Jill Noble :how much did I lose fertility wise as they get older?
Unknown Speaker :I as far as semen quality and that sort of thing and fertility. I think it's more as long as the Rams mobile. Okay. Until
Jill Noble :structural correctness. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah. And that ram that I was just taking off was, had come from Tasmania. And I was lucky enough to get hold of him. It was the I was the third stud to get hold of him. I had him for four years. He'd come from Kevin Moore in Tasmania, and he'd been to Hayden with overseas and spent a couple of years there and have been used in every place and bred really, really well. So and even in his last year, I went and got semen collected and from all accounts to Siemens, fine. They said it's perfect. So he's saying his age wasn't really a factor in whether his facility was good, but in his last four years I gave him 70 years each year and he covered those fairly, fairly well fairly well, especially for his age.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, longevity like that. I don't think
Unknown Speaker :it's very hard to trace. Because if we're always we're always trying to move on to the next thing. So having a having a record of how long your Rams are living is it's hard very hard to trace unless you start talking to your clients. If they start dying very quickly, they'll let you know but it's hard to know where the land Rams are living five or seven or eight years and and how often I plan to trice.
Jill Noble :Yeah, that's amazing. That's really good. So if someone wanted to increase the performance in their flock, what would they do that?
Unknown Speaker :Um, well, we just had a briefly chatted about it before but Firstly, whether it's commercial, or whether it started, probably your first port of call is to buy yourself a decent set of scales and weigh bars and a crate to be able to weigh your animals. Knowing what they're doing on and converting the feed that you've got a month. So you can actually work out what they're doing. And so you know, when they'll be ready is the other thing. We'll try it try to predict when you're ready to sell and performance wise and for people standing up, then you move in, especially the stats sort of thing you move into, like we said, the Lamb plan and all those sort of figures to start recording, you know, the more the more things you record, the more information you can get back and then the quality of data becomes greater, but there's no point recording something that you're not going to use. So sometimes you can waste a lot of time recording something that you're never going to use And, and then actually recording it to the best of your ability to actually get that data from the pake onto a computer onto a system. Sometimes the quality of that data that comes through some of my lambing books look quite tattered. Whether whether or not Yeah, you've got to get that data to happen correctly, your birth weights
Unknown Speaker :and all that sort of stuff needs to come in and go into onto the appropriate system as quickly as possible so it's not loss.
Jill Noble :I want them if what Wayne crate Do you use and what system do you use to do that?
Unknown Speaker :Oh, I don't want to use I don't want to promote someone but probably seems to be fairly popular and I yeah, most of the stock agents are using the system as far as awake right? I use true tests on that system with mine. And there's all the others, the Gallagher and all the other systems there are. But true test in my area seems to have good good information. Good backup service. Not only Well, I went to school with the state manager is in my year at high school, but if you ever bring that person up, which I do regularly when we're trying to set up new fields of data, and they're always there to help you. So that's that backup information when you you can have a whole lot of email id and tags like things like that, that can actually clog up your time if you don't know how to use the system properly. And something that's sent to try and make your life easier often to start with harder, but once you get your head around it, it's invaluable to collect all that data. Yeah, because that's where the hidden dollars are really collecting that data for your clients. Yeah.
Jill Noble :Beautiful. So how do you how do you then get this balance? right thing? if if if the structural correctness is so important for that longevity, but the performance measures are also crucial to us. What do we do to try and get that balance?
Unknown Speaker :Well, we're not. If you're starting out, I think the best thing you can do when you're starting out is to find someone you trust and ask other breeders to find someone you trust that can when you're buying animal, especially stuff started starting, which, you know, I'm sort of toying with the idea of going into a new breed of just started this year, but finding what you need and not buying someone's cows, is probably the best bit of information that I've picked up along the way. Is dispersal sale is always good value. Now you might have to pay very very good money and I've been under bidders on record price use and all sorts of things before but usually the money pays off so if you're buying animals that someone else wants to keep and you've got someone reputable bidding against you, you know you're probably on the right track with the right animals. If you go to a sale where they're selling off their cold animals, you're probably starting from below average in the flock. So there's probably probably giving them a you know, five to 10 year advantage on you genetically by buying someone else's cows now, it's hard to then find the dispersal sale or better yet than the dispersal if you find a breeder by their old use. They're casting out for age. Yeah. Now when I started all my use the suffix for cast for ages, I got one to two lambs out of them. But they've been kept for five, six year old because they were good. They weren't cast out at one and a half or as lambs because they weren't at the top of the tree. So they'd been kept that had good lambs and then you went and bought costs right us money means they're cheaper. Yeah. Which is when you know I've paid $2,000 for you before so it when you stop paying a couple thousand bucks for you, it can get costly pretty quickly. So buying cars for ages is probably the best way to go. If you can't get a dispersal situation to buy cheap commercially, usually you are buying someone's seconds. You know when you go to an offshore sale They're in the office yourself for a reason they're either seconds or they are asked for AIDS which probably you are better off the castle actually is so commercially as well, that's Yeah, where you're at with those if you can get those dispersal sheet, they're worth every penny.
Jill Noble :And of course if they're cast, right Jews, they've just structurally correct you would think because they've they've been able to think so.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, exactly that I've got the stuff that you want and structure, generally it's going to be pretty good performance. If they've been kept for four or five years, they've probably had performing lambs if they haven't. If they haven't had performing lambs, they're probably not they're not there anymore. They're gone in the first two to three years. So yeah, that's where I'd be looking at. The same goes for when you're starting up breeding animals by the best ram possible. Now, the best ram possible isn't for sale. So that leaves you with AI usually and that's what I did with my suffix. I imported two Rams from New Zealand from the coffered start in New Zealand, I went over there I was on a. That was in 2009. I went over to coffered and had a look at the Rams that we're using and imported semen from New Zealand while we're still good cheese not happening at the moment, but hopefully soon and bred a line of shape from some new zealand genetics, the best I could find over there at the time, and yeah, that's bred the basis of my cervix, which now is probably more related to all the shaping New Zealand than it is to the shape in Australia. But that's where you go to get good, like genetics.
Unknown Speaker :Brilliant. That's great
Jill Noble :and Just talking about calling then what how would you make some culling decisions do you make your culling decisions on and this could be, you know, calling it any stage of your flock? Do you make it on your structural correctness? Do you make it on your performance?
Unknown Speaker :I think you do a bit of both. There's visual cows straightaway. They don't sometimes. Sometimes the biggest animals unfortunately, I have seen Rams getting around with one testicle fully grown. So they should probably be called out and that's, that's up to people like those sort of things called straightaway, maths males to come along. And when it comes down to when you're selecting what use you're going to keep, and you probably pretty quickly carry out 10% on performance at the bottom end. That goes straight away. You don't you can nearly do it on white Having said that, you've still got to make sure that you're not just calling all your triplets because they will be in your bottom 10 to 20% usually, but you can usually come a fair percentage off the bottom through the drafting guy. And after that I would be watching them walk from behind so you can see how they track with their feet make sure they're not hockey or by legged from the back when they walk make sure they track properly and with their feet and past and looking at them from the side that they're straight and all that sort of thing from the start and then and that their backline their top line is straight out we talked about earlier. And a funny thing too.
Unknown Speaker :So it does
Unknown Speaker :on commercial value on your on the table but your grade taught If you go off type, it will stay with you for a long time. And if you pre start if you heavily use an animal that is off type in the breed type in its head, and in its wall type, all that sort of thing, it will keep coming back because it's one of those tracks the visual trade if the walls not right, and you know, three generations down the track, you'll go, why are we still getting these funny looking walls coming through? And it's because you've made a sacrifice. You sacrificed that animal and you said, right when everything else is good about him, we're really just using that to bad about his world. So that will keep coming back. The other thing I I look for is an animal that has presence. So an animal that well, it comes along occasionally they kind of know they're good and I They strap around and keep the head up above that keep that head out proud. And you might not think that does that doesn't add any value. Well not commercially perhaps. But when Rams come into the pin to be sold a ram that has some sort of presence and acts proud is usually more masculine and and has a movement and a balance that's hard to describe. So you might get an animal that's got you know, incorrect shoulders, short neck and that sort of thing that's going to be proud because he doesn't have the right structure to strung like he should. I've seen animals in the show ring even at Adelaide show and RAM cell as soon as they took the holder off the ram the ram structure in the ring and does is just And all of a sudden hands are in the air that probably if you hadn't letting go, were there. So it's something that had to describe, but when you see it, it's the presence of an animal. It's the one that sticks out when you when you have a mob of 100 grams or 30, RAMs, whatever, there'll be one that's, that's the proud animal in the mall. And something I aim to always work out which one it is, and hopefully it's more than one.
Unknown Speaker :It's Yeah, it's something I sort of aim to have. Yeah,
Jill Noble :that's great. Yeah. And yeah, a lot of people do they talk about that in a salary outlook and things like that. I like I think it's something to do with testosterone, but maybe not.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, yeah, to the great. The other thing I'm and I'll probably mention this person later, but there's a fellow that I read an article and it was in a while. Gentleman, he he actually described the correlation of an animal's head to the rest of their body. So if you measure the width of an animal's hole, and the birthing canal on an animal, his use correlate to his head width to the width of their hind quarter and the birthing canal, all those things were like linked from the tip of their nose to the top of the pole relates to the length of their spine, and all these different measurements like the measurement from their, from their abroad or their eye, down to the top of their throat and gender, their jaw line helps correlate to the depth of their body, right, all that stuff. If a Rams got a weak head, let's say he's got a feminine weakening head, then some part of his body is not right as well because those measurements correlate to his body. So he's got a narrow thing here and he's probably not going to be Why along the body he's going to be a narrow sort of shapes and all those things that go to make an animal look mess around look masculine and look like he has the presence that you have that you're, after all correlate to the animal being correct. If I had to judge sheep purely on its head, I think that you could get down to your top, top 10% just from the head. Like you don't really all those all those things. A thick animal will not have a skinny looking head and and usually nine times out of 10 that that rings true. So yeah. Very bit of reading that. Oh, and that was done by a fella named Ralph spears. I wish I could find it on I'll go through the archive. I'll get Nicky Ward to look it up the Secretary and find that for me but it's something that Young greatest should probably look at because all those measurements and the way he described it was something that stuck with me this long so yeah.
Jill Noble :Fascinating. Yeah, I've heard a few things like that before. And but I haven't heard them quite so well described. So I think you've done a great job Nick describing those Well,
Unknown Speaker :I'm quoting rough seas there. Correct.
Unknown Speaker :Now you've got that
Unknown Speaker :was that was really granted quite good.
Jill Noble :Yeah. And you're and I think it's quite amazing, isn't it? How much comes back to that? That visual piece and again, that's that structural correctness? It's some Yeah.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, you look at things with your eyes, and it sells to me that sells and you can that you can have all the performance The
Unknown Speaker :end of the day, I'm
Unknown Speaker :visually appealing, not only on the paper on the performance but visually appeal to people and have that braid type so that they know what they're buying. Yeah. And then, you know, then they can sit people driving past can have an app with a Merino use, and then the ram pops its head up to know automatically, what grade of ram it is, if they know what breed it is because it's got a breed type, and it's a saleable asset.
Jill Noble :Yeah, fabulous. That's, that's really good. Right? And if if someone wants to buy sheep, you mentioned, you know, Casper age and things like that. What would be some other advice that you'd have for someone buying sheep, particularly around some of these things we've been talking about?
Unknown Speaker :Oh, well, You got to remember that when if someone comes to my place to look at, say, I'd like I would bring all my CP. So if you're only seeing a portion of this shape, they're probably not showing you what you're missing out on. I'd like to know what I'm missing out on because sometimes I might dip in my bucket and try and buy the good ones. So, like I said before, if you if you sometimes you bought better off buying less and getting more, if you're not what I'm saying. So, if you if you buy the as higher animals up the tree as you can, you don't know where they are until you've seen the whole tree. So if someone can possibly bring that in their whole flock to show you what the average of their sheep is, and then give you an overview of their whole stack, you're much better off than buying from on ones only the ones you're seeing because no matter what size group of animals you've got, there's the best one in the group but if that's the hundreds best one that's not necessarily that good. So you don't know what you're missing out on unless you see the whole picture. Wow Yeah,
Jill Noble :yeah that's yeah that's that's something Yeah, and it's funny enough because places I go to by shape often that's what happens and I think why did you bring in everything you know,
Unknown Speaker :you know, I'm no I'm so good.
Unknown Speaker :Before you put the money on the table for a draw. Yeah, have you ran
Unknown Speaker :because what you're saying might not be anywhere near what you Yeah, the level of thought. And often The same thing happens you buy shake at a sale somewhere. You get them home and you have that buyers regret when you put them next to you next to your best ones and you go Hmm, okay, so that's what I've bought this time and it's very hard to to No. And so you get them side by side.
Jill Noble :Yeah. So I guess that's where sometimes the performance data might be useful in some
Unknown Speaker :instance? That's right. Yep. Because if you've got all this data, you can say, Well, where's this one? as well, so, but yeah, performance data so you can know what you're chasing. And as far as growth and all that sort of thing, you can start getting it. And the other thing is when you're buying shape, like we were saying before, buying lines of shape, and you're much better off by a couple of sisters or siblings in a group that all look similar, so that you've got a line to start with. And if you buy the cow, let's say the cow lambs have five different lines, you've got five different starting points anyway. So at least if you've got one line, or write one or two lines, rather than instead of five lines, you You've got a bit of advice to work from rather than just having this shotgun effect.
Jill Noble :Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Wow. Fabulous. That's, that's amazing Nick Now obviously, for you to have all this knowledge and be able to share all this knowledge you must have we all learn from others. So who was been the major influences in your sheep journey?
Unknown Speaker :Um, I, early on I had some people visit Bray high school for a trimming school I had Ian Pfeiffer visited there that day and spent a day with the students. I probably learnt a lot from him that day about trimming. Not necessarily that trimming is is the end all be all but the wool side of things to get the interest and keep that interest in which the kids you Need to get them around. So he taught me a lot. Then Helen Schultz same time she was at NIH as well. She's something greater. And Pfeiffer at the time had the oldest suffix done Australia and I ended up working for him in Bhutan, worked for him for two years, and probably best to my suffix start off with the bill bloodlines and then got stuff from New Zealand. Like I said, I'm probably one of the number one people that I spend a lot of time with is Graham day. And I spent two years working for Graham and with his sons found out I learned a lot from him about a balance of animal and just sort of invaluable information. If teaching you things when you don't even know what's happening. day to day, feeding the Rams the Rams every day with buckets and looking at You know, 30 or 40 Rams every day taking in so you start to pick up what balance looks like. It hits you, it just hits you as soon as soon as an animal walks in the ring, it's got the right balance. If you've seen it enough times, it, you don't even have to look that it's got the right length of the neck and shoulders set correctly. It's wedgie shaped. All of a sudden you that's just what you like. And so, yeah, Graham was definitely a big influence. And Hayden Whittlesey, who I worked for Hale stuck, he had white daughters. He had what suffix and Dorset's or worked for him for a number of years, showing sheep and helping him on commercially as well. All in all these people in and around Bordertown. So there's a few stats here to compete with, but even valuable information, especially on braiding, and when I got the Haydn's, I chatted to him and he said, all this Is all lovely but if you don't bring a line of sheep that's consistent What are we doing it for and I sort of took that on board if that's probably the number one line from working from Hayden is yeah definitely breed a line of state that you can do something with. And I've definitely bought sheep from him that do that is one of the stats where my Tasmanian ran had gone through and then come to me my nine year old when they he was well traveled. I call him big Kev.
Unknown Speaker :And, and probably Yeah,
Unknown Speaker :the next person or I would say is influenced me not with the amount of time I've spent but would be Kim and Dale more. Because of the genetics that I've got from that ram that have been passed on through my staff has probably given me the leg up especially the white suffix came from them. has influenced my style up. And Ralph's fears to information whenever you get to sit with someone with that sort of level of knowledge and passing stuff on to you. So that you know, that little little bits and pieces. And there's a couple of people that I will mention that I haven't really spent a lot of time with. But on the line breeding side of things, Graham Gilmore, and Jason are Lacan. They're people I'd like to sit down with and I've got plans to discuss line breeding with them because it's easy enough. Like I said, You've got one line of shape that you're trying to start to line break that then you need to bring something new in and cross back and try and get a get a system happening. And those those fellas, they're the experts, in my opinion doing that. So that'd be my next step. So right.
Jill Noble :Yeah. Jay, I would I would love to to attempt to have a recorded podcast with the three of you on that
Unknown Speaker :conversation
Unknown Speaker :be the be the student there are.
Unknown Speaker :A lot of my listeners asked
Jill Noble :about line breeding in particular. So that's really good because I can now go and try and hunt down some people to talk about Oh,
Unknown Speaker :someone's got some missing time. Very good.
Unknown Speaker :Very good besides me going and hunting them myself.
Jill Noble :Yeah, there you go. While we sit down. This is what the podcast is all about. It's all about trying to make it more accessible and trying to, you know, bring this sort of knowledge to people so that we can all learn for sure. That's great.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah,
Jill Noble :I'm what I'm what you eat lamb, Nick. Yes, yes. What's your favorite cut of lamb? Ah,
Unknown Speaker :well, one that sticks with me is my grandfather. Christmas day doing Line shops in a vertical grill. And I don't think they taste the same in the frying pan, but I'm in the vertical grill so that their own fat is keeping them moist as it drips down into the drip tray. I've still got Yeah, I still think that's the best way to have a lamb chop. Wow my opinion they that's that's how I've still got my grandfather's passed away but I've still got his vertical grill. I inherited it on my show.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, that's
Jill Noble :just for the line shops. That's fabulous. That's great. Beautiful. Well Nick what what what amazing knowledge you have this is so fabulous. What what what would you like to leave our listeners with what would be a bit of a summary of some key points on your topic tonight that you'd like to leave your listeners our listeners with?
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, okay. If I if I was gonna say something to someone a couple of key points. Brady state from the ground up the fake teeth and testicles need to be right first. follow it up with your performance so that you start testing for performance. So you know what you've got. Sometimes it's hard to know what you've got, you might have good performance shape, look at other people's shape, feed them 10 times what we're doing and think that they're so much better. And sometimes they're not. So yeah, do that. Do that and start with someone else's house raid us because they're quality, quality at the price. Yeah, that's what I'd say.
Jill Noble :Yeah, that's really good advice. Thank you so much, Nick. I really appreciate you helping our listeners on this particular topic and, and opening up our eyes to a few little things to be aware of. So thank you so much for joining us.
Unknown Speaker :No worries. Thank you.
Jill Noble :Oh, actually, just before I leave you, how can people get in touch with you? Sorry, I should have mentioned that. How can people get in touch with you?
Unknown Speaker :You can get hold of me on facebook political suffix on Facebook. We've got a site there for us stuff where you can just get hold of me on Facebook or contact me for scanning or whatever through that easiest way to do Pinnacle suffix.com.au for sorry, Pina crucifix at Big pond.com.au is my dress, excellent guide stuff that's
Jill Noble :gone through live scan as well. Can they contact you through live scan to
Unknown Speaker :a live scan as well? Yeah.
Jill Noble :I'll put those things in the show notes as well. Great, Nick, thank you so much.
Unknown Speaker :Thank you. Bye Transcribed by https://otter.ai