EVERTHING Old Is New Again, a song from the musical All That Jazz, could be an apt anthem for this year’s wool enterprise on Journey’s End, the Greaves’ family farm near Koorda.
Firstly, prices Gary Greaves received for 75 bales – part of a March shearing held over until week seven auctions last month at the Western Wool Centre – harked back decades to when wool was a regulated industry and growers had a floor-price safety net.
“Our wool clip was pretty awesome (and the prices) were the best for wool I’ve seen here for 20 years,” said Mr Greaves, who farms with wife Pam, son Ryan, 17, and parents Neville and Helen.
Like most eastern Wheatbelt wool, Mr Greaves’ Merino fleece was in the 21-22 micron range, MF5 good by the style guide, a little long at up to 106 millimetres staple length and with light burr – typical of the WA wool being snapped up by Chinese processors.
A line of his lambs’ wool sold to a top of 1171 cents per kilogram greasy and his ‘sweep the floor’ consignment average was 1018c/kg in a market building towards record territory the following week.
His wool prices were a rewarding “bookend”, he said, to prices for 504 Merino-Dohne wether lambs which topped Westcoast Livestock sales three times in as many weeks at the Muchea Livestock Centre in June.
Secondly, with a dry autumn and winter shaping as potentially the worst season in 40 years of farming, Mr Greaves resorted to the old practice of turning his flock out to graze Calingiri and Mace wheat crops at the five-leaf stage in July, before locking the paddocks up again.
Late rains delivering 45 millimetres the middle of last month saw the crops rejuvenate and, according to Mr Greaves, they are “going along nicely now”.
“It’s a practice that was used 40 years ago,” Mr Greaves said.
“It was something my father showed me (his grandfather was first to bring sheep to the region in 1910, running up to 10,000 sheep in his early years on the property).
“It saved me hand feeding, especially when the lambs were being born which helped ewes mother up to lambs better – not hand feeding every day.
“It hurts when you see the sheep go into the crop,” he said.
“But it certainly didn’t make any difference to what we are going to get from them this year.
“In dry seasons they start to run up and you get a little tiny head on them which makes the paddock useless, so you graze them down and they start tillering again.
“This is wheat and sheep country, you can’t have one without the other.
“My father recognised that 70 years ago, and his father told him that.
“Sometimes you can’t grow a crop, but you can always grow a bit of wool.
“That’s the thing people tend to forget with sheep, you’ve got three income sources with wool, prime lambs and marketing of your older sheep – one of those three will usually be pretty good which compensates for a fall in the others.
“Fortunately this year both wool and meat have been very good to make up for the poor cropping side of it.”
Mr Greaves is proud of his sheep which do very well on light stocking rates and are an important contributor to farm income and weed control.
“I consistently erect approximately 10 kilometres of new fences each year – I don’t mess around with that now, and it’s not to keep my sheep in, it’s to keep other sheep out,” said Mr Greaves, whose community contribution includes six years on Koorda Shire Council where he is deputy president and a lifetime involvement with various local sporting clubs.
“We only crop (a paddock) one in three years, so it gives us a chance to build the soil up with liming and I put a fallow program in the year before it is cropped,” he said.
“That gives me two years to actually control the weeds, which cuts down on chemical costs when it does go to crop.”
Currently, Mr Greaves estimates he will be “very lucky” if his wheat crops produce 0.8 of a tonne per hectare by Christmas – his usual average is 1.2t/ha.
“You’ve got to be consistent with sheep, once you are in a routine and are happy with the system, stay with it and the years are what they are – that’s the secret of being in sheep,” he said.
“You don’t get radical and jump from one side to the other you’ve got to be consistent.
“I wish so many other farmers would understand it – they knew it but some farmers got out of sheep for lifestyle reasons, and some people should never run sheep.
“Sheep are very easy to run if your infrastructure – that’s your fencing, your water points and your stock yards – are adequate, there is no work.
“And that infrastructure also counts the day you sell the farm, it enhances the price of your farm.”
Mr Greaves described his approach to sheep as “methodical”.
He mates 1500 ewes a year but not his dry young ewes.
For the past four years he has used Dohne rams from the local Mollerin Rock Dohne stud run by Ian and Steph Longmuir, over his youngest ewes for their first lamb.
That has minimised lambing problems by producing small birthweight lambs that grow quickly.
“After they’ve had one lamb a ewe will lamb more easily so after that a Merino ram is used which comes from Quentin and Di Davies (Cardiff Merino stud, Yorkrakine),” he said.
“That way I’m only ever going a first cross Dohne, because I don’t want to lose the wool production side.
“It also gives me the opportunity to put the Dohne lambs into the prime lamb market.
“Merinos take a little bit longer to grow out and I only ever keep the Merino lambs.
“What I’m aiming for is a Merino ewe with a Dohne frame and also straightening the body up a bit more.”
This year on Journey’s End, lambing rates were down slightly on Mr Greaves’ aimed 110-115pc, but were still very good.
“The Dohnes were 99pc and the Merinos were 106pc which is really a reversal because usually the Dohnes will out-lamb the Merinos,” he said.
“It was also the first time I’ve ever seen quadruplet lambs born.”
Mr Greaves culls his four and five-year-old ewes depending on the season.
“I don’t believe in keeping them, it gives me a market value and I’ve always got plenty of ewes coming on to be mated,” he said.
His methodical approach applies to sheep and cropping – he still has grain stored with CBH – and is based on being in a position to take advantage of any markets when opportunities arise.
With sheep, his plans are already focussed on next season by doing the best he can for them this season.
“Unless you keep your sheep up in good condition you’ll always see the results of a bad year in the following year,” he said.
“If you aren’t doing the right thing by your sheep right now, it will show next year in your wool, with tender wool, or in poor fertility.”
“You can’t just back off.”