Head Shepherd

This week on the Head Shepherd podcast we have Jason Strong, Managing Director of Meat & Livestock Australia Ltd. (MLA)
Jason grew up on a farm and says "I can never remember not wanting to be a cow farmer." He says that winning a scholarship to the University of Illinois in his late teens was "transformative" in his career.
"The most important thing was learning about meat grading and meat science. I got really excited about being a meat grader and came home [...] and realised we didn't have a meat grading system.... which is quite career limiting."
"That's what got me started working with Dr Rod Polkinghorne and John Webster [...] that set up the Meat Standards, Australia system."
Jason worked in various roles in Agriculture but with one common goal, to make the industry better for everyone. Now, as Managing Director of MLA, Jason gives us a run down of what MLA do, for our non-Australian listeners, and also what they are focusing on in the next few years.
"At our core, we focus on research development and marketing."
Jason makes a great point in saying that over MLAs time, they have invested in 12-13,000 projects. Which means it's hard to find something in the livestock sector they haven't looked into.
"When we think about research and development, so much of what was a challenge for us twenty years ago, [...] so many of those things have been solved or improved. So the breadth of things that we need to invest in, is a much shorter list now than it was 32 years ago"
Jason says that MLA are focusing on the importing things going forward. "When we put our strategic plan together, we took a "Fewer, Bigger, Bolder approach."
Mark asks what the "big ticket" items that MLA are focusing on.
"Sustainability," Jason says. "We've doubled investment in that space. We've committed to double our investment in adoption and extension and we also significantly increased our investment in traceability and biosecurity"
Jason is very enthusiastic about the future of the industry, and as he should be. "The industry is in an amazing shape. Particularly in the last five years. The success of the collective industry are coming to the fore"
Considering the past few years and everything that has happened, Jason says that prices for red meat will remain strong. He says that the collective effort of the last 20 years, building markets and connecting with consumers, is now showing benefits.
"It's not a mistake. It didn't just happen [..] there's absolutely a component of where we're at at the moment. The underlying strength of where we are has come from all of the other things''
One benefit of such a strong market is that we have more certainty in our investments. "We can now make a direct connection between investment and benefit." Jason says. When it comes to genetics, farmers now know their decisions will actually pay off financially. Farmers can now buy rams with traits they know they will be rewarded for by the supply chain.
This episode is a great reminder of how far the industry has come in the past 20 years and

Head Shepherd is brought to you by neXtgen Agri International Limited. We help livestock farmers get the most out of the genetics they farm with. Get in touch with us if you would like to hear more about how we can help you do what you do best: [email protected].
Thanks to our sponsors at MSD Animal Health and Allflex, and Heiniger Australia and New Zealand. Please consider them when making product choices, as they are instrumental in enabling us to bring you this podcast each week.
Check out Heiniger's product range HERE
Check out the MSD range HERE
Check out Allflex products HERE

As producers, you're always wanting to get the most for your hard earned produce and it always helps when your processor wants that for you, too.
Located mid-way between Sydney and Melbourne, Gundagai Meat Processors (GMP) is one of the most innovative lamb processors in Australia. GMP became a household name within the industry as they were the first to offer premiums for IMF.
This week we have Will Barton, CEO of GMP on the podcast. We start off strong diving straight into why GMP decided to offer a premium to suppliers.
"We had a period from 2000 to 2020 where we weren't trading. What that meant for us is, in 2020 when we stuck our head up and decided to launch Gundagai Lamb as a brand, we could start up as we wanted. We said "Hey, we're going to do something different do you want to come with us?"."
Will goes through how GMP decided what that "something different" actually was.
Gundagai started the process of change by paying less for over-fat lambs, and more for lambs that had a better meat yield. They have now developed a scoring system called GLQ score.
"We realised [...] that if we didn't have an eating quality measure to balance the lean meat yield trait... we were potentially going to be in a situation where we bred chicken." i.e lean, fast growing and tasteless. "We need a 'guardian' of eating quality."
Will runs through the work they did with machine learning and AI to come up with the GLQ score.
"It's more than just IMF. It's an algorithm that encourages above average marbling but it also discourages over fattening."
"If we get a carcass thats got an insane amount of marbling but a low lean meat yield, it wont make GLQ5+. Because it's unsustainably fat and we want producers to be tuning into genetics to create that outcome rather than just over fattening an animal to get there." Says Will. "We also track 20 animal health conditions and/or carcass defects. We take a point off for any of those animal health attributes on a carcass by carcass basis."
To sum all of that together means a GLQ5+ lamb has to be above average eating quality, which has not been done via excessive fattening and the animals either got clean bill of health or the farmers been given feedback to improve their practices over time- so a holistic attitude approach.
And how much financial reward as a producer do you get for achieving that?
"We pay, at the moment, $0.80/kilo for a GLQ5+ lamb."
Mark asks if there's any focus on a particular breed, or if they'll work with producers advising on those requirements to be GLQ5+. Will says that's not the role of GMP
"We see that you can have any breed that you like and achieve the desired outcomes if you follow the right genetics and then match those genetics with the right nutritional platform. We're not about to become agronomists or geneticists."

Head Shepherd is brought to you by neXtgen Agri International Limited. We help livestock farmers get the most out of the genetics they farm with. Get in touch with us if you would like to hear more about how we can help you do what you do best: [email protected].
Thanks to our sponsors at MSD Animal Health and Allflex, and Heiniger Australia and New Zealand. Please consider them when making product choices, as they are instrumental in enabling us to bring you this podcast each week.
Check out Heiniger's product range HERE
Check out the MSD range HERE
Check out Allflex products HERE

This week we have a fantastic podcast for you discussing a very hot topic, Methane emissions in ruminants.
We have Dr Suzanne Rowe, Senior Scientist at AgResearch talking about the history of recording methane in sheep, what the industry is currently doing towards reducing methane emissions and where the future of methane in sheep is heading.
Dr Rowe was born and raised in the UK, studied Agriculture and has a PhD in Quantitative Genetics. She then moved to NZ "..where we've got the great facilities and big herds." Suzanne has been working, for almost the past decade, on breeding sheep with low methane outputs.
"The program was started in 2007 by a man called John McEwan, I'm sure many of your listeners would have heard of John. He set out to understand whether methane could be measured and whether it was heritable."
John started with 1,000 animals from CPT flocks, so his findings would be applicable in the industry immediately. "It took him around 4 years to get them all through the Portable Accumulation Chamber (PAC)." The PAC is a chamber which uses a gas analyser measuring device to record gas outputs from sheep.
Back then it took two days to measure one animal. Every 6 minutes a sample would be taken from a PAC, so it did give a very detailed result.
"From there what John did was select high and low methane selection lines and go on to breed these sheep for generations, to see if methane was passed on."
And was it?
"We're here today because it was. It's heritable."
"We went back and looked at those 6 minutes measures over the 48 hour time periods and we looked at each [...] measure and we worked out which of the ones were most predictive." This research and investigation work, evolved since the initial detailed studies, means now just a half an hour 'stint' is needed inside a chamber.
There are currently PACs in Ireland, units in Norway, one off to Scotland, France and Australia so the world is really starting to ramp up methane measurements in livestock.
AgResearch are currently trying to find out the connection between the gut microbes and methane emissions. "The microbiome that sits in the gut, is a property of its' host." Says Dr Rowe. "I don't think thats some maternal transfer, I think that's from the genetics of the animal"
"There are different ways to ferment feed, it seems that the low methane sheep have picked a different way to ferment the feed"
Suzanne briefly talks about the future of measuring methane in sheep. Recently they have been looking into taking and processing rumen samples and comparing them with PAC results. This could allow for more rumen samples to be taken in difficult locations where a trailer can't reach, or even with larger species such as cattle and deer.
However, it's not currently as easy as it may seem. The feed intake has to be very specific and precise prior to taking rumen samples because, as Suzanne explains, "We just don't have the validation or resources to know it's like for like". (For every grazing scenario)
Suzanne tells us about the Beef and

Head Shepherd is brought to you by neXtgen Agri International Limited. We help livestock farmers get the most out of the genetics they farm with. Get in touch with us if you would like to hear more about how we can help you do what you do best: [email protected].
Thanks to our sponsors at MSD Animal Health and Allflex, and Heiniger Australia and New Zealand. Please consider them when making product choices, as they are instrumental in enabling us to bring you this podcast each week.
Check out Heiniger's product range HERE
Check out the MSD range HERE
Check out Allflex products HERE

Want to know more about sheep parasites? This week we have Ginny Dodunski on the podcast chatting about everything from drenches and capsules, to resistance and refugia. This podcast is full of handy, helpful tips, which will hopefully make you take a step back and look at your worm management programme on farm.
In the last 12 months, Ginny has been the Wormwise programme manager but, prior to that, Ginny was (and still is) a practising large animal vet.
Wormwise was launched as an initiative to help farmers manage drench resistance. Ginny says that resistance to anthelmintics was always going to happen. "Parasites were always going to develop a resistance to drugs. The more days in the year your worm population is exposed to drugs, the more opportunities they have to breed and get around it."
Mark and Ginny spend the podcast discussing what you can do if you do have drench resistance and how you can clean your farm up practically.
From different methods of refugia, cattle grazing and careful management of drench usage, Ginny says there are solutions to the problem. Mark points out that, "Well-monitored is the only way to be, you can't do any of this shooting blind." Ginny explains that, for the first few years, technical management can be overwhelming, but once you "get your eye in", she says it can be a lot less formal.
Mark and Ginny discuss the genetics behind it, and how it's not always about doing faecal egg counts and watching drenches. "It's about really focusing on feed and condition and minimising larval challenge."
If you'd like to keep up to date with Ginny and Wormwise, you can find them on Facebook here.

Head Shepherd is brought to you by neXtgen Agri International Limited. We help livestock farmers get the most out of the genetics they farm with. Get in touch with us if you would like to hear more about how we can help you do what you do best: [email protected].
Thanks to our sponsors at MSD Animal Health and Allflex, and Heiniger Australia and New Zealand. Please consider them when making product choices, as they are instrumental in enabling us to bring you this podcast each week.
Check out Heiniger's product range HERE
Check out the MSD range HERE
Check out Allflex products HERE

This week on the Head Shepherd podcast we have Jock Lawrence, creator and founder of Mobble.
After returning home to the family farm in Victoria Australia, and realising that all of the important information was up in "Dads head", Jock and his family trialed some farm management software in an attempt to get the operation running more smoothly. However, none of them worked for both generations of farmers, and none had all of the things they both wanted.
And so, Mobble was born.
"Everything you need to help manage your livestock farming business. Simple, practical, flexible livestock farm management software."
There has been great feedback so far on Mobble, with farmers finding it solving their communications issues between teams and family members without any complications.
Being a "mob" based app, you can't get caught up in the complications of individual animals which is where some software goes wrong. "The data the farmer needs most, is up in their face. We want to give them quick access to the information they need, giving them more time in their day"
Eventually, Jock hopes to add individual animals as an "add on" to Mobble.
Jocks favourite part of his role is connecting with farmers and finding out how they can make the software work for them. Mark and Jock agree that it's not always about making money, sometimes it's about efficiency and saving time. With clients across Australia and New Zealand, Jock gets to connect with a wide range of clients who all have different ideas and inputs.
Mark and Jock discuss the future of Agtech and where application connectivity will take farming in the future- a pretty exciting place!
If you would like to find out more about Mobble, you can visit their website below.
https://www.mobble.io/
Check out The Hub
thehub.nextgenagri.com
Our community where our members have the opportunity to keep up to date with everything we are working on.
Thanks to our Sponsors
Allflex Livestock Intelligence is the leader in the design, development, manufacturing, and delivery of animal monitoring, identification, and traceability solutions. Their data-driven solutions are used by farmers to manage animals. By putting intelligent, actionable information into farmers’ hands, their solutions empower them to act in a timely manner for optimal outcomes.
A big thank you to our sponsors, Allflex Livestock Intelligence and MSD Animal Health Intelligence
www.allflex.global/nz/

Head Shepherd is brought to you by neXtgen Agri International Limited. We help livestock farmers get the most out of the genetics they farm with. Get in touch with us if you would like to hear more about how we can help you do what you do best: [email protected].
Thanks to our sponsors at MSD Animal Health and Allflex, and Heiniger Australia and New Zealand. Please consider them when making product choices, as they are instrumental in enabling us to bring you this podcast each week.
Check out Heiniger's product range HERE
Check out the MSD range HERE
Check out Allflex products HERE