FATHER-son duo Gary and Jake Ryan are proving that anything can grow inside the gates of their Three Ryans property at Manjimup.
Generations of the Ryan family have worked the South West property since it was purchased in the 1950s by Gary's grandfather Edward Ryan.
Soon after the property was cleared it was utilised as a dairy farm and in following years successfully grew potatoes, apples, cattle, sheep and, at one point, 100 per cent of their vegetable production was cauliflower.
In the late 1990s Gary Ryan introduced broccoli and cabbage to his cauliflower crops for the local market, where now, 90pc of their products go to processors to be bagged and sold in supermarkets.
Nowadays, accompanying Jake and Gary on the 200-hectare property is Gary's wife Tracey, along with seasonal vegetable picking staff.
The enterprise consists of 1000 breeding ewes, 20 rams, 30 Angus breeders and poultry plus the vegetable production.
The ewes are joined in early January so lambs drop onto green pasture in June.
Leading up to lambing, ewes are grazed in a confinement feeding environment in paddocks varying from five to eight hectares.
"Grazing paddocks are broken down into sections divided by hot-wires and the stock are moved every Monday, Wednesday and Friday while they are lambing," Jake said.
This year the Ryans' Merino and first-cross multi-meat Merino breeding ewes achieved a 135pc lambing.
The Ryans buy Merino ewes and cross them with a multi-meat ram and the first cross lambs are kept as breeders and joined to Poll Dorset sires.
"We used to run first-cross Border Leister ewes but made the switch to the multimeats about five years ago due to their higher fertility and birthing rates," Jake said.
"The multimeats carry the Booroola gene," Gary said.
The Booroola gene is a prolific gene that leads to multiple lambs in sheep and animal productivity improvements.
"The biggest problem with the gene is that you can get too many lambs per ewe, whereas with the Merinos and most crossbreds you want them on a rising plane of nutrition when mating so they can have as many lambs as possible," Gary said.
"With the Booroola gene, you need to restrict their feed intake so they don't have too many lambs.
"They will end up with four to five lambs per ewe, but we aim for two to three per ewe by controlling and restricting their diets before mating."
Once the lambs are weaned they are rotationally grazed and Gary said that "the grass is eaten down for a day and then rested for three weeks".
"After marking the lambs are moved daily, we follow the principles of the Allan Savory method and use a holistic grazing approach and it works really well for us," Jake said.
The Savory holistic grazing method is the practice of documenting grazing movements that take into consideration the time a plant is exposed to a grazing animal so that it has time to regenerate in a healthy environment.
"The cattle and sheep go in together all in one mob in the winter and spring months," Gary said.
"We have grazed this way for four years now and we have noticed that there has been an increase in grass availability each day and have noticed healthier plants and animals as a result."
The Ryans aim to sell their lambs to V&V Walsh when they reach 50 kilograms liveweight, however they have also started export sale to Singapore this year.
"We aimed to team up with an exporter due to the premium price we get for being regeneratively grown," Jake said.
"Our ideal lamb is a minimum 50kg liveweight at about five to six-months-old - or 45kg if they are a twin or triplet - and we hope to dress out at about 24-26kg," Gary said.
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"Depending on the season we will sell lighter but we like to aim for the heavier end of the market because we've got a longer growing season down here so we can afford to have our stock on green pasture for longer to get them heavier.
"Consumers in the market we sell to are looking for something grassfed, something lean with a lot of flavour and a good level of tenderness."
Generally the livestock graze on summer cover crops, pastures and silage, with oats only fed out if necessary, depending on the season.
Pastures are a crucial aspect to the Manjimup property and are something that is constantly being improved.
"The sheep are the key to our soil management," Jake said.
"We have increased sheep numbers by 30pc since 2017 and we are hoping to increase again, since the numbers have increased we have noticed a big change in our grass quality."
The whole property gets planted with a cover crop annually and having the sheep graze on it helps to increase the soil life biology.
"We don't do any forms of cultivation when planting our vegetables anymore - we have turned to strip-tilling and we plant the veggies in small strips and plant up and down," Jake said.
"It works out to be one year of vegetable growth and four years of pasture, which is equivalent to four years of soil building," Gary said.
"We spray fertiliser, trace mineral and soil amendments on all pastures to get the nutrient density up," Jake said.
