A LOVE of the agricultural industry and positive market outlooks for sheep and wool are the major drivers for Rick Standish and his sheep enterprise at Tenterden.
Having been involved in the sheep and wool industry for 45 years he is fully aware of how the industry and markets have changed.
Initially Mr Standish started out as a shearer as an 18-year-old, but was always intent on becoming a farmer and purchased a 230-hectare property 10 years later.
He continued to work as a shearer up until 2008 and ran a shearing contracting business for 20 years, running three teams.
But today Rick and wife Trish now are fully focused on their sheep and wool operation that covers 1160ha (860ha owned and 300ha leased) which they run with their son Geoff, his wife Emily and two-year-old daughter Emilia.
They have a near-pure Merino affair with 1700 mated Merino ewes and another 650 hoggets, keeping the sheep enterprise as simple as possible.
They also produce some crossbred lambs for their personal use.
"We just try to keep it as simple as we can and do it well," Rick said.
"We have always had Merinos on the property and we have never detoured away from them being our main breeding flock.
"We like them and run them as they are strong dual-purpose animals and very hardy.
"They have also been highly profitable, particularly in the past five years.
"Wool is such a unique natural product and the Merinos produce such good, clean wool.
"With Merinos, as long as you look after them and feed them, they will do well for you."
For the past 20 years the family has been mainly wool focused, but in recent years it has recognised the benefits of the Merino's meat side as well.
"With the way sheep and wool prices are at present, you have to be focused on both," Rick said.
"I think going forward you need a diversified animal and the Merino can definitely offer those traits."
When it comes to their wool production objectives, the goal is to produce as much as possible and to fill as many bales as they can.
Rick said they were not into producing fine wool or looking at microns - all they want to do is produce a lot of good wool.
They produced 100 bales at shearing last year.
"I think our sheep cut well last year, but we still want to improve on it," he said.
"The grown ewes averaged 6.4kg and the hoggets 3.7kg."
In terms of flock fertility, the Standishs are not aiming for over 100pc lambing percentages believing twins do not go as well.
Rick said he preferred singles - one ewe and one lamb and for them to both be productive.
"Twins are always the lesser sheep, there would be heaps of people who disagree with that but I like to just have good individual lambs - but that's nearly impossible to achieve," he said.
"Not only are they lesser sheep, twins cost twice as much to produce, especially in drier years when feed is scarce and it also puts more pressure on the ewe.
"Ewes with twins tend to cut less wool and there are more culls because the twin lambs don't do as well as a single.
"If you can get one nice and big, healthy lamb up per ewe, you're doing well and that is what we aim to achieve."
Over the years, with slight management adjustments like calcium stock lick and Vitamin E on the grain when trail feeding, not only has their wool increased, but so too their lambing percentage - up from 87pc 10 years ago to about 92pc now.
When calculating the lambing percentage, Rick prefers to do it at weaning instead of marking, believing it is more accurate.
"It gives me a better idea of what I have, in terms of numbers going forward, as you can still lose a number of lambs between marking and weaning," he said.
Generally the ewes are joined after Christmas, with the aim of lambing starting in early May.
The majority of the rams used at joining have been bred by the family in their nucleus flock of 200 ewes and they purchase one or two stud rams from the Mullan family's Eastville Park and Quailerup West studs at Wickepin.
When selecting rams for the nucleus flock, Mr Standish seeks rams which test about 22 microns in the wool.
"Once a ewe has a lamb they come back quite a bit in micron and they lose a bit of density as far as the wool cut goes," Rick said.
When it comes to selling their wool and sheep, they put plenty of trust in their agents to get them the best returns.
"As farmers we are price takers and have to take the best offers.
"So this means you have to be flexible when it comes to selling, whether it be saleyards, abattoir or restockers because, in all honesty, we are not price makers."
The majority of their wool is sold through Dyson Jones in the auction system and while wool prices were currently at a five-year low, Mr Standish said it was still good money.
"Although the price of wool has dropped, there is still money in wool and while no one likes to see the price drop, you can still make a good dollar from wool," he said.
Rick is happy with the price being paid for sheep at the moment and for the past couple of years they have sold their wethers off as lambs to processors, but last year they sold to a grazier in the Wheatbelt.
Going forward he said producers had to be careful and not price themselves out of the industry.
"If the price gets too high people won't buy lamb and if wool gets too expensive then people will just go and buy cotton, so we have to be careful with what you wish for," he said.
Strong demand from the Eastern States is driving up the price but Rick predicts this will come back a bit and he is fearful of the industry overproducing.
"Everyone says that we are not at a sustainable level but we are because if we weren't we wouldn't be exporting all these sheep," he said.
"If we relied on our local abattoirs and didn't have live export, sheep would be worth a lot less, so it is important to have competition."
Rick said another concern was China currently not buying as much Australian wool, believing stockpiling in sheds could have longer-term price implications.
In addition to their sheep enterprise the family also has a small cropping program each year which includes 100 hectares of canola and 120ha of barley, with some of the barley being kept for sheep feed.
They also sow 90ha of White Stallion barley for hay and grazing for their sheep enterprise.
Rick said depending on the season they cut between 600 and 1000 rolls of hay a year and for extra sheep feed, they also store 200-250 tonnes of barley from harvest on-farm.
When it comes to the two enterprises he said the sheep and cropping enterprises complemented each other well and he wasn't looking at changing up the mix anytime soon.
"The sheep give us a resting phase for our cropping paddocks, while the crops provide us with the feed for the sheep," he said.
With the past two seasons being dry, the Standishs have had to supplementary feed their sheep for almost seven months of the year.
Rick said supplementary feeding could be quite costly, but it has to be done.
"We feed our sheep a lot of hay and a lot of grain, because we know if you do you will get the returns," he said.
While the family has lick feeders on the property Rick said he prefers to trail feed everything because it reduces his workload and makes sure there are no shy feeders.
"Our ewes are trail-fed all the way through lambing and not only are we making sure everything is getting a feed it also allows us to check on them," Rick said.
Not only has the past few dry seasons caused the Standishs to feed more, water on the property has also become a major concern.
In 2019 they received only 320 millimetres, which is well below the area average of 450mm.
Rick said you could be the best farmer in the world and do everything right but if you didn't get the rain it could make producing good wool and crops even harder.
Last year is not the first dry year the Standishs have had to persevere through - 2006 was also a particularly dry year which meant that Rick had to cart water for an extended period of time.
"After that year I swore I would never do that again, it felt like it was a never-ending job.
"So we spent a lot on catchments, drains and enlarging dams to try to drought-proof the farm," Rick said.
This season so far has shown some signs of promise with the property having already received 215mm (up until the beginning of July), but it hasn't been enough to fill the dams.
"We are still hoping to get more rain, as I don't want to be carting water again," Rick said.
