Brown family at Jerramungup has lifelong passion for Merinos

So it would come as no surprise that when the fourth-generation farmer was growing up, his parents Trevor and Carol struggled to keep him off the land.

"Mum always tells this story from when I was about five," Mr Brown said.

"We were mulesing and I was meant to go to school, well I got to the bus stop and wouldn't get on.

"I put my feet and arms up against the bus door and flat out refused.

"In the end mum and dad said 'fine you can come home, but you have to stay inside and in your room until smoko'.

"Well, I went into my room, opened the window, ducked out and ran straight down to the sheepyards."

Today, Mr Brown runs a 3700-head Merino ewe flock at Needilup with his wife Jess and children Mason, 8, and Evie, 3.

And the passion for sheep farming is still very much coursing through the family's veins.

"Mason is a mini Wade, apparently he is just like him," Ms Brown said.

"If there's anything happening on the farm he protests a bit, he won't want to go to school otherwise we have to save jobs for him to do on the weekend.

"He has been interested in sheep forever and has always loved going out onfarm with Wade."

Mason added that his favourite time of season was lambing.

"I help dad, I chase the sheep, get them into the yards and I draft them," he said.

Mr Brown said, "I was tagging all the stud lambs the other day and when I finished the pen Mason would put them back in the ewes and draft them back out again".

"These are 120 to 130 kilograms of ewes I am talking about," he said.

Of the Brown's ewe flock, 2700 are mated to Merino sires and 1000 to Coolalee rams, which the family breeds in its nucleus stud flock of 220 Coolalee ewes.

The sheep are run across 1500 hectares.

Meanwhile, 2200ha is dedicated to wheat, barley, canola, peas, lupin and vetch crops.

Mr Brown's family moved to Australia from England in 1911 and settled in Needilup a year later.

"They cleared the land and started growing," he said.

"Great granddad had six sons and they all had farms around the district.

"They all had children and there would have been about 20 of us farming around.

"Well now there's only two of us farming here (at Jerramungup)."

Over the years other sheep farmers in the area have shifted their primary focus to cropping, but Mr Brown decided to stay true to his passion for farming sheep.

He said when it came to Merino sheep, it was the breed's dual-purpose he liked most, as well as being outdoors and working with animals.

"We do quite well out of Western Australian Meat Marketing Co-operative (WAMMCO) with the wethers and there's also the wool side of them too.

"Merinos are becoming much easier to care for with breeding these days.

"We are breeding a more plain-bodied sheep, which is not as wrinkly as it used to be."

At its peak in 2017, the Brown's farm was running about 4500 ewes, but it was forced to pull back on numbers due to the dry years that followed.

With high rainfall and plenty of feed on the ground this year, Mr Brown decided to buy in more sheep and is looking at slowly breeding numbers back up.

"I think there are loads of positives in the sheep industry at the moment and the money is going to be there for a few years to come," he said.

This year Mr Brown shortened his joining period for ewes and rams from six weeks to four.

That is so sheep can be put on grazing crops, where they can lamb in June, and then be moved on.

When the joining length was six weeks, Mr Brown found he couldn't shift the sheep from the crop when he needed too.

"It made management much easier in terms of just being able to move the sheep," he said.

"I preg tested early and late this year, so I could sort them all out and shorten that lambing gap."

The conception rate for the four-week joining reached 91pc, which is up on the high 80s that Mr Brown had predicted.

"To get that was really good and I put that down to the four-week joining," he said.

"I think twins were maybe at 138pc.

"And then with the dries, well we put the rams in two weeks later and ended up getting half of them pregnant.

"Another couple hundred lambs there would be pretty good."

Merino lambing percentages overall sit at about 102pc.

In wrinkled sheep, Mr Brown has found lamb percentages are lower than the plainer bodied ewes.

The past two years, the Browns have turned to confinement feeding as a way to cope with the low rainfall.

They set-up a number of pens, trialled what trough system worked best and ended up sticking with culverts cut in half.

This proved to be the best system due to the width and fact grain could be dropped into them easily.

Mobs of anywhere between 160 to 400 ewes are put into the confinement feeding pens across 5ha, which has been split up where it was too rocky to crop.

Meanwhile, larger paddocks can hold anywhere from 500 to 600 ewes.

Lambs are weaned in September onto vetch, which also helped to clean up paddocks and set nitrogen.

Lick feeders are put in those paddocks with pellets and peas - whatever is being fed through the feedlot - before lambs are weighed.

"Depending on when we finish harvest, we will start looking at the lambs and weigh off the biggest ones," Mr Brown said.

"In that first draft anything over 45 kilograms will go into the feedlot.

"We will shear them and start sending them away."

Mr Brown's liveweight target for lambs would average 53kg.

For Merino ewes, he aims to produce a "nice meaty body" on a small animal that is easy to handle.

"If you can get them to that weight early and quicker, then a 70kg ewe is probably all you need," he said.

"Personally, I don't think you need a 100kg ewe because they're too big to handle."

Mr Brown said one of the ways sheep farming tied in with his cropping program was that the animals helped control weeds, take pastures out of the cropping phase and helped manipulate them.

"They take out all of your broadleaf and grass leaves and set a good clover base and nitrogen/nutrient," he said.

"We have found the wind blown situation can be difficult with overgrazing a few paddocks.

"But I think it all works really well, particularly being able to control weeds easier instead of trying to control them in crops.

"It helps you make the most of your stubble and things like that.

"We graze a lot of crops too, so that's another benefit right there."

Mr Brown planted 30 to 40ha of Planet barley before it rained this season, as a trial for grazing stockfeed.

About 30 sheep were put on per hectare of Planet barley to graze it down over three weeks.

It was a trial, before the cropping season properly started a month later.

Sheep are shorn in the middle of March at the family farm with Mr Brown grabbing the handpiece and also shearing.

"People can't believe I still shear, but I love it," he said.

Wool averages 19 micron and cut about six kilograms per head.

Ewes are classed up hard for a "nice bright wool and staple length".

Having been in the industry for his entire life, Mr Brown has experienced the highs and lows of sheep farming and has learned how important it is to adapt with change and forward plan for the future.

Comparing the wool market crash to today's market is one of the most significant changes he could pinpoint.

"We kept sheep through the market crash, but also lost and sold heaps," he said.

"I remember we sold old ewes for a couple of dollars, now you look at them and you can get $200 for them.

"The focus has definitely gone more into the meat side of things in the industry now, particularly with crossies and even with Merinos."

When live export stopped in 2011, Mr Brown was stuck with 1200 wethers, which had nowhere to go.

"We had to feed them for three months and said 'We have to find something better'," he said.

"So we started feedlotting all the wethers and putting them through WAMMCO, instead of through the shippers."

Mr Brown also decided to utilise large, open areas on his property that machinery can't get to by planting saltbush over the next few years.

Already he has planted 10ha and is seeing positive results with three to four grazings coming out of the area each year.

He said this helped provide feed in the drier conditions and provide more shelter at lambing, particularly for twins.

"More shelter for lambing will hopefully increase our lambing percentages," Mr Brown said.

"Then in those drier years we would have the saltbush sitting there for extra feed to keep the animals ticking along.

"It also has the added benefit of a natural wormer for sheep."

So what are Mr Brown's plans for the future?

Well he wants to fulfil his dad's dream of building a new shearing shed.

And of course continue to build on and get the best out of his flock.

"I couldn't imagine doing anything else," he said.