Too many Sheeps

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By Dwain Duxson

Too many Sheeps - Sorry, I watched a couple of episodes of "Jeremy Clarkson's Farm", where he calls Sheep Sheeps. So it's now hooked in my brain.

I was listening to the Ag Watchers podcast featuring Tom Bull (a Sheep industry entrepreneur), and he was saying we have too many Sheep in this country.

According to Tom, the better the Lamb prices got, the more Ewes were retained for breeding. He said, you know we're in trouble once you see Farmers keeping Terminal Ewe Lambs (Dorsets, Suffolks)". And to add to that, Sheep breeders also kept or bought older Ewes to boost breeding numbers, which meant more Lambs and now that has come back to bite us. 

I started out on the Farm in the late 80's when we had "peak Sheeps", 180 million of them and most were bred for Wool production back then. But the question I ask myself is, how the hell did we process those sorts of numbers back then? Today, our processing capacity can't keep up, and we have less than half the numbers we did. So, can someone please remind me how we processed all those Sheep back then? Reply to dwaind@farmtender.com.au 

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