High price rams bad publicity

[Ysgythan]

It’s nice that you think it’s cheap but 9/10 shoppers buy on price do they not? Chicken and other proteins are difficult to compete with, we can certainly improve the way we market our product but that lamb sales as a whole are contracting at a rate of around 5% YOY. I just can’t see how the price can go up and we expect consumers to keep buying it.

So sell to the 1/10. The ethnic profile is changing, hogget and mutton may be the future. With the backlash against plastics and peak oil being any time soon wool may see a revival yet.

 

[DrDunc]

So sell to the 1/10. The ethnic profile is changing, hogget and mutton may be the future. With the backlash against plastics and peak oil being any time soon wool may see a revival yet.

Only once the oil runs out

There's still too much money to be made from vegans eating food substitute that relies upon petrochemical.

Sustainable sheep production for the actual market is still a media myth, despite what we already know

 

[Ysgythan]

Only once the oil runs out

There's still too much money to be made from vegans eating food substitute that relies upon petrochemical.

Sustainable sheep production for the actual market is still a media myth, despite what we already know

I’m suggesting where we might have an eye for the future. We can’t get stuck fighting today’s battles tomorrow.

 

[Global ovine]

How the hell do you performance record hill blackies? First thing the ewe does when you go near her new born lamb is feck off over the heather.

Presumably these performance recorded sheep live on grass, not the hills?

?

FYI
There has been technology around for about 2 decades now to allow the recording of unshepherded hill flocks. Many such flocks exist in NZ using DNA parentage, an accurate pregnancy scanner to age foetuses and access to a full performance recording scheme. These flocks have large ewe numbers often in their thousands.
I guess that over a third of NZ stud (pedigree flocks for supplying genetics to commercial farmers) are using this technology now as NZ's sheep industry is now much more concentrated in hill country since the dairy expansion in recent years, therefore is more akin to the commercial practices and environmental challenges of farming such country.
It is very expensive to initiate, having to get a DNA profile on each breeding female and sires, followed by tissue sampling all animals in each generation thereafter to identify pedigrees by their DNA. If weaning numbers differ from those scanned, the line has its survival estimates adjusted accordingly.
Recording technologies have advanced now to predict a genomic BV in the more common breeds and composites under the name of "One Step" by SIL.

Obviously such technology can be transferred to such flocks as Blackies etc. if the will is there and commercial farmers support those breeders willing to invest in such technology to improve commercial farming returns.