LIVESTOCK producers were in luck last week, when Elders Mt Barker and Elders Albany teamed up to host two successful Livestock Production days.
Both events had a great turnout with farmers attending sessions in both Mt Barker and Wellstead, with 75 and 50 growers showing up respectively.
Elders, Albany rural products sales manager Karel Counsel said the aim of the events was to share information with growers in regards to a more holistic approach to animal production.
"We wanted to look at animals from birth right through their productive lifetime and maximise the efficiencies within that," Ms Counsel said.
"This was an important point that all the speakers wanted to get across to growers."
The main guest speaker at the event was Elders livestock specialist Rob Inglis from Wagga Wagga, New South Wales.
Mr Inglis raised a number of key points for the WA livestock industry, highlighting problems in production systems and then provided potential solutions.
He said something that resonated with him was the number of people that were still using single active drenches in WA.
With single active drenches seen to be a "no no" over East, Mr Inglis described the fact that they were still used in WA is "questionable" to say the least.
Mr Inglis suspects these drenches would be costing producers a lot in weight loss.
Another key point raised by Mr Inglis was reproduction rates and the importance of maintaining condition score throughout the joining period and pregnancy.
"Sometimes we tend to take our eye off the ewes, particularly during summer joinings and let them lose a bit of condition in the second trimester because they are joining on stubble, which is fine," Mr Inglis said.
"This can compromise birth rates and lamb survival."
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Focusing on trace mineral deficiency throughout the session, Mr Inglis commented that this was becoming a growing issue.
"Soils are getting less fertile, we are not replacing microminerals, particularly in coastal areas of WA with higher rainfall," he said.
Maximising feed conversion and efficiency was also a popular topic over both events.
Mr Inglis spoke of using manure to calibrate how well the rumen is working in terms of how efficient the animal will be.
He also discussed the topic of traceability and the aim to lower the carbon footprint.
"People will now want to source food that has the lowest carbon footprint, if animals are converting feed more efficiently, there will be a lower carbon footprint per kilogram of production," he said.
Mr Inglis believes in years to come this will be a significant issue and it will need to be managed accordingly.
Other speakers at the events included Elders wool representative Travis King, Elders livestock production sales Ella Jane-Bird and Elders agronomist James Bee.
Mr King gave a general update on the wool market and an overview on prices from a WA perspective, as well as possible things that may impact or be of benefit to growers in the near future.
Ms Jane-Bird covered her area of expertise, discussing diseases that are not necessarily commonly known, but have been causing underlying production losses, such as: campylobacter, Bovine Johne's disease, worm burdens and new metabolic diseases in sheep.
Mr Bee discussed pasture production with growers, as well as nutritional forage options and touched on technology that's utilised nowadays with satellite imagery on properties that shows development of fire mass, production, and how that technology has improved over time.