Sheep Industry News October 2025

Three Weeks Down Under with the Sheep and Wool Industry

Brent Roeder MSU Extension Sheep and Wool Specialist A s one of the largest sheep and wool producers in the world, a lot can be learned from taking a trip down under. I was fortunate enough to spend three weeks in Australia and drove 7,000 miles attending LambEx (the largest technical sheep exposition in the world) and visiting research facilities, stud breeders, and wool industry locations to better understand how the Australian system works. Here’s what I learned… Around 90% of Australia’s 70+ million sheep can be found south of a line from Adelaide to Brisbane in the east and another from Esperance to Perth in the southwest. Most of the sheep are run on improved pastures with 16-20” precipitation in an exceptionally long, coastal growing zone. Summer is their harshest time with temperatures over 100F for extended periods and little rain. In Western Australia where we spent most of our time, the merino breed still dominates, but there are growing numbers of first crosses using either White Suf folks or Dorset’s and a growing number of hair sheep. Most ewes are mated in late summer (December-February), preg nancy scanned, lambed in mobs of 60 to 100 on pasture in mid to late winter (June-August) to get ahead of the spring rains. Ewes are mostly shorn after lambing and lambs are weaned around 60 days of age. Once ewes are shorn and lambs weaned, ewes are run on canola or winter wheat aftermath in the summer. Lambs are marketed light, usually between 50 and 60 pounds as they do not have a market for large lambs. Lambs are usually run on pasture to achieve a final carcass weight around 38 to 42 pounds. With the dry spring they had across southern Australia, they will lot feed many of these lambs to make up for slow gains and lack of pasture. Hay is only fed as an absolute last resort. Some of the notable differences you will see other than driving on the left side of the road are that there is almost no plastic anywhere. All disposable cups, plates, bags, and sil verware are made from wood products. Fuel is expensive and there are no gooseneck trailers. You either haul a few sheep in the back of a Ute, pull a small trailer or schedule a multi decked semi. In 7,000 miles across the south, we only saw about one hundred head of cows. All the cattle are run on the north side of the country. The lamb was particularly good and could be found in any restaurant or grocery store. The beef

was not so good and harder to find. The big pipelines that one sees running everywhere transport drinking water as Western Australia is especially short of useable groundwater. Every building has a rain catchment system. There is a complete ab sence of any firearms. A special permit will allow a producer to keep up to three guns for fox and kangaroo control in a locked safe. The police force is privately contracted in Western Australia, and they can enter your house at any time to check on your guns or pull you over for no reason to search your ve hicle or give you a breathalyzer test. There is almost no manu facturing. Everything is either imported or exported with iron ore, minerals, canola, wheat, beef and lamb and wool being major exports. Producers have extremely limited options to do any value-added processing with either lamb or wool. They are very aware of their strategic situation in the Pacific and several

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