Innovation the key for next generation

David Forrester, who farms with his wife Caroline and their daughter Sophie (24), runs 18,000 Merinos over four locations on 3050 hectares at Qualeup, Boyup Brook and Cranbrook.

While he has had an interest in innovation, David said it was Sophie who continued to push him and steer the family business in the right direction.

Sophie, who featured in the Farm Weekly Young Guns pages in March 2017, said she hadn’t previously seen the farm as a serious career opportunity, but loved the work so much that, with the encouragement of her parents, she enrolled in a regional skills training-based Diploma of Agriculture via Charles Sturt University.

She has been working on the farm, Glenkeith, full-time for the past four years.

Sophie’s younger sister Kate also lives on the family farm and is a local primary school teacher.

“There are quite a few young people who are quite bullish and that’s fantastic,” David said.

“Whereas us older fellas probably want to back off.

“Here is Sophie wanting to plant summer crops, build our feedlot and focus on sheep management and breeding her own rams.

“But if it was just me, I would be just plodding along and not looking for that next innovation, so it’s good to have the next generation coming through.

“It’s how we keep things rolling.”

When he started farming at Kojonup, David said he ripped the fences out.

“Sophie is saying now we need to cut the paddocks in half and make them smaller to help manage sheep,” he said.

Sophie has also fenced according to soil structure so they can better manage any crops seeded or pastures due to water-holding capacity and nutrients.

She has also focused on fertility rates and David said their flock’s fertility had increased.

“We are becoming more efficient and getting more lambs on the ground,” he said.

David also said he would continue to invest in the farm’s future.

He said lifting mechanisms and improved sheep handling products, meant it was possible for Sophie, despite being petite, to handle sheep on her own.

“Running sheep at the moment is fun because the facilities available now are a lot easier on the producer and you can see the benefits at the end,” he said.

Australian Sheep Breeding Values (ASBVs) have helped David and Sophie to produce and retain larger-framed sheep, resulting in heavier lambs and more of them.

Due to the Forrester family’s focus on meat quality in previous seasons, its ewe flock currently cuts an average of 4.5-5 kilograms of wool.

But striking the right balance between meat and wool production means David and Sophie are really starting to select MPM rams with high, clean fleece weights in a bid to bolster their wool clip in future seasons.

The use of Excel and Agrimaster, as well as keeping electronic records and reports, has seen Sophie contribute significantly to the running of the business.

This year will be the first year the farm grows Super Sweet Sudan as a summer crop that Sophie hopes will fill the feed gap.

“We thought we would put some summer crop in,” Sophie said.

“We put millet in before and that went well with most of our really low lying paddocks.

“We thought we might as well make the most of those wetter paddocks because we can’t crop them but we can summer crop them.”

This week Sophie and David will start spray topping their paddocks as they prepare to seed Sudan.

Sophie said the soil had to get to 16 degrees Celsius before it can be seeded and it’s currently at 14oC.

With that in mind they should be seeding the summer crops within the next two weeks.

“We are trialling 70ha this year of a paddock which is quite water logged, so hopefully that will go well and it should be exciting,” Sophie said.

“Three weeks after we sow it, it could grow up to 90 centimetres.

“It’s not like Sorghum where they have the toxicity levels, they don’t tend to get as much from the Sudan.

“Also you have to do a lot of on-off grazing with it and also you can cut it for hay, so if the season didn’t finish off like we wanted it to and it grew, then you have other options with it.”

Another innovation of Sophie’s was to build a feedlot on the property after doing her research.

“It will be a good tool for the three dry months of February, March and April,” she said.

Sophie has also encouraged her parents this year to do sheep benchmarking.

“It’s good to see where we are sitting,” David said.

“What we have learnt from benchmarking is the more food you grow, the more profitable you are with sheep.

“The more they eat the more they produce, both with wool and sheep quality.”

David said he had never seen a better time for his daughter to be involved in the industry.

“In my farming time I have never seen it this good,” he said, highlighted grain, wool and sheep prices as well as low interest rates.

“We all know that things don’t just keep going up, one day there will be a correction, so we are lucky we get to make the most of the current circumstances.”

David said farming was good at the moment and looking back, he can’t think of a time when things have been better.

“Although land prices are expensive, which is only going to be a good thing because it’s making farmers utilise what they have,” he said.

This was on the back of a tough start to the season where they had to buy grain for sheep feed.

“We had a lot of oats and hay on board and we thought we would have lots left,” David said.

“Seasonally we have been very lucky, I have Eastern States’ friends and they are doing it tough, weather wise.

“It does make you appreciate an above-average season and the prices are pretty bloody good.”

Sophie said despite the dry start, it wasn’t as late as most people thought.

She said even though they had a good finish last year, the stock weren’t in good condition going into summer and they continued to suffer over those few dry months.

It was a slow start with only 73.5mm recorded at the end of April and 52mm of that total fell on January 16.

They recorded zero rain for February, 7.5mm in March and 14mm in April, but followed this up with 87mm in July and 96.5mm in August.

In total the property has received 386.5mm for the year which has set up a good foundation for the summer crops.