TRENT McLean is a young farmer keen on the sheep side of his family’s mixed enterprise in the Corrigin and Wickepin districts.
Across the family’s three properties, the McLeans operate a total of about 5000 hectares on which 5500 head of sheep play a major role.
“We run about half and half sheep to crop on the Wickepin properties and probably two thirds cropping at the home place in Corrigin,” Trent said.
Not only do the sheep play an important role in the McLean family enterprise, Trent has a soft spot for the sheep side of the operation which is always heartening to hear from a youngster recently headed home to the farm.
“I think I probably prefer the sheep to the cropping,” he said.
“You do have to work all year round when there’s a lot of sheep involved, but I think it’s probably more sustainable to have sheep as a big part of the business.
“Then there are things to worry about for cropping like weeds and the high risk for frost we have in this area but a bit of frost doesn’t hurt the sheep.”
When the McLean family acquired the properties at Wickepin in recent years, they were already well set up for running sheep with quality sheep handling infrastructure, sheds and plenty of tree belts for shelter and salt mitigation scattered across the land, so it was a no-brainer to keep sheep running there.
And Trent said he doesn’t mind a bit of sheep work even though the feeding process can get boring after months of dragging the sheep feeding trailer around behind the ute.
“It does get a bit annoying having to feed so late into the year with such a small amount of rainfall so far, but we’re getting good money for wool and the sheep prices aren’t too bad so it’s worth the effort you have to put in,” he said.
But just because running sheep alongside the family’s cropping program is worth it, it doesn’t mean the McLeans like to over-complicate things.
“We probably run our sheep business a bit differently to most people because we don’t have a breeding flock of Merino ewes, instead we buy in all of our ewes at the age of about 4.5 years old,” Trent said.
When ewes are coming into the local market during the spring the McLeans head to the saleyards and pick up their annual requirement of replacement ewes which are then brought home to be joined to Poll Dorset rams.
“We usually only keep the ewes for two years before we sell them and keep the turnover rate pretty quick,” Trent said.
“Ideally we’d probably prefer to be buying the ewes a little younger at maybe 3yo but those types of sheep can be hard to find for the right price.”
Trent said when the family hit the saleyards at Corrigin, Wickepin and Katanning, the main factors they keep in mind are the age and condition of the ewe, as well as wool length.
“We don’t have any specific traits we’re chasing really other than that they’re healthy with a good bit of wool on them,” he said.
“One of the main things I’ve learnt about running sheep is how important it is to keep them in good condition rather than letting them drop so we try to buy sheep that are in fairly good nick so we don’t have to feed them up too much to get them where we need them to be for joining and we continue to keep them in good condition.”
The Poll Dorset rams which the bought in ewes are joined to, are bred on property from a small breeding flock.
Though they don’t measure traits, the Poll Dorset rams selected to breed are growthy and well-structured.
“We did buy in some Golden Hill blood White Suffolk ram lambs last year to try something different as well,” Trent said.
“Those will be joined to the younger ewes to give them a bit of an easier go of it because the Poll Dorsets have big heads that create some birthing issues for us.
“White Suffolks are a bit smoother through the shoulders and have smaller heads so hopefully they’ll help remove some of those problems at lambing.”
Lambing percentage wise, Trent said the operation usually achieved a weaning percentage around the 100pc mark but due to the dry conditions this year they expect to be weaning substantially lower numbers.
“We start lambing in April each year and this year the numbers were definitely down on last year,” he said.
“But we’ll just have to look after the ewes really well while they’ve got young lambs and hopefully we’ll turn off a good number when it’s time to sell the lambs.”
Overall, numbers on the property are at a sustainable level for the operation, although Trent said the family felt the dry seasons.
“When it’s dry you wish you had less on the place and when it’s green you think you could run more so I guess we just try to keep it right at the point where we’re running as many as we can but not too many to handle,” he said.
“And that’s one of the reasons we don’t like messing around with a big breeding flock because we can stay flexible when we’re buying in ewes each year.”
Managing the flock consists of pregnancy testing of the older ewes to identify those suitable to cull early.
“We keep the younger ewes if they don’t have a lamb because we like to get a couple of shearings out of them before we sell them,” Trent said.
The ewes don’t have long on the property and the lambs stay for as short a period as possible as well.
“Because the lambs are coming into the market in spring when there are a lot of other lambs ready too, we try our best to have them ready as soon as possible and make the most of good prices before they start going down with the rush of supply,” Trent said.
“We don’t do anything fancy to finish the lambs, we hopefully have green pastures to sell them off but that’s not always the case, so depending on the season we’ll sell some off their mums and some already weaned.
“The lambs that we do end up holding over the summer are carried over a couple hundred hectares of lupins which finishes them off well.”
Trent said the family wasn’t tempted to move towards a self-replacing Merino flock because the system they had in place was working well within their broader enterprise.
“The thing that excites me most about having sheep on the property at the moment is the way the sheep work alongside the crop program,” he said.
“Sheep and cropping work well together and complement each other.
“It’s pretty awesome that wool prices are so good at the moment as well, so we just need a little bit more rain.”
Speaking of rain, the last rain event at the McLean family’s Wickepin properties more than 10mm was in January with only 16mm falling between then and last week when thankfully 19mm of rain fell on very dry paddocks, which Trent hopes will mean he’ll be seeing some green out there soon.
A few drops of rain in June won’t hurt either but regardless of good seasons or bad seasons, Trent and his family plan to continue buying in ewes, turning off lambs, growing crops and repeating the process each year.