WITH the way sheep meat and wool prices are at the moment it is little wonder young farmers like Sophie Forrester are excited about the future.
After graduating from Presbyterian Ladies College (PLC) Sophie moved back to the family farm at Qualeup, west of Kojonup, and undertook a business apprenticeship while working on the property a couple of days a week.
Sophie hadn’t previously seen the farm as a serious career opportunity but loved the work so much that, with the encouragement of her parents David and Caroline, she enrolled in a regional skills training-based Diploma of Agriculture via Charles Sturt University, and has been working on the farm, Glenkeith, full-time for two-and-a-half years now.
Together with her parents the 22-year-old helps to run 17,000-18,000 Merinos over four locations or 3050 hectares at Qualeup, Boyup Brook and Cranbrook.
The business supports 8000-9000 self-replacing ewes at any one time with 3000-4000 being oncoming hoggets from the previous season.
The home farm runs pregnant ewes and feedlot wethers while the two lease blocks at Boyup Brook carry ewe and wether hoggets and the long-term agistment block at Cranbrook houses older wethers.
The Merino breed has always been really solid for the Forrester family – the yearly wool clip has always paid the flock’s overheads and no matter how lacking markets have seemed in the past, the average income has always been reliable.
This year’s prices and marketing opportunities have seen the Forresters retain their wethers for a longer period of time than in the past, as well as offload cast-for-age and surplus ewes in recent Kojonup sales.
Sophie said the strong market also helped her and her father to make a decision to hold onto all of their wethers this year, rather than lotfeeding them and selling them as lambs or hoggets as they have done in the past.
“They’re usually sold before the next lambing season due to space constraints,” she said.
“The wether lambs from the current year are usually drafted off their mothers and split up into three groups of 200-300 apiece then lotfed and sold in succession.
“A couple of years ago when grain prices were really high it stopped making sense to supplementary feed them and it started to become very labour intensive.
“The long-term agistment property at Cranbrook means we now hold onto them and have been able to continuously run them on pasture.
“All things going according to plan, we’ll keep last year’s wether lambs until after our November shearing this year.”
The Forresters’ wethers are usually bought on-farm by local abattoir Beaufort River Meats and the farm’s 4.5-5.5 year-old cast-for-age ewes are joined to Suffolk or White Suffolk rams for value-adding before being put through the saleyards at Kojonup or bought on-farm by stock agents representing grazier clients.
The farm’s Merino rams are bought from David and Hamish Thompson’s Moojepin Multi-Purpose Merinos (MPM), Katanning and older bloodlines from the Harvey family’s now-dissolved Centre Plus WA stud, Kojonup, though they still run through some of the older ewe lines.
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.
“It’s about striking the right balance,” Sophie said.
“MPMs allow us to wean more lambs each year which results in a higher return on a per hectare basis.
“During the last few years we have sold our wool straight after shearing via Scanlan Wools but this year, seeing as we haven’t sold a wether, we might have a look at forward selling.”
This week marks the beginning of pregnancy scanning at Glenkeith.
With some encouragement from Sophie, the farm business started scanning for twins last season and has since been managing mobs accordingly.
Dry maiden ewes get a second chance – partly because they’re also good wool cutters – and the process allows Sophie and her family to plan for oncoming lambs, pro-actively recognise health issues and add value to pregnant ewes bound for the saleyards.
“In terms of wool and sheep meat prices, I only really came into the industry five years ago so I’ve only seen it get better and better,” Sophie said.
“I haven’t seen markets crash or seasons fail.
“We’ve increased our average income per hectare substantially and are netting a higher income than ever before in terms of livestock.
“And thanks to the implementation of technologies we’re making more calculated decisions.
“Strategic planning and management means we can see what’s happening in the past, present and future.”
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.
“There are so many female farmers out there who are really passionate about and talented in what they do which has given me the courage to pursue a farming career,” she said.
“In Kojonup and the surrounding areas there are a lot of young women running stock-based programs with plenty of energy and patience.
“I encourage more young women to seriously look at the sheep industry as a future career and hopefully even more opportunities will present themselves in coming years.”
Sophie is also a Southern Dirt Young Farmers committee member.
The committee works to keep young farmers engaged in the local farming scene and offers courses and educational events.
