The sheep & wool industry is on the crest of a wave that may never end. Unfortunately not enough producers are cashing in.
Our industry still has sheep that need jetting, are hard to shear, have a very low reproduction rate, have coloured wool & micron blowout, need mulesing & have very high cost of production.
These problems are caused by heavy, thick, tight (wrinkly) skin.
To remove this skin from our industry we need to start the phase out of mulesing. All sheep can be mules free in 4 years.
When mulesing goes, every problem the wool industry has will go with it.
Mules free sheep have open faces & smooth, thin skin. This type of sheep generally has a wrinkle free breach. Obviously selection pressure will enable a bigger bare area around the tail.
The rams above are the 2018 sale rams. Note the very heavily muscled bodies, long loose wool and excellent bare breaches.
Easy Doing Merinos make sense economically … they’re dynamic wool and meat producers … as well as ewes being highly fertile.
