articles.

Explore this collection of articles from the neXtgen Agri team and beyond. You'll discover practical advice, along with research, producer profiles, interviews with industry innovators and highlights from the Head Shepherd podcast. We also share reports and articles published by the wider industry from time to time.
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You can find more great articles, along with webinar recordings and other resources, on The Hub, where the team regularly posts new content for the neXtgen Agri community.
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Latest article.

Hitting the wicket: why accuracy matters

When I hear the word accuracy, I immediately think of sport. Netball, AFL, cricket - they’re all games where hitting your target matters. Whether it's Ash Barty landing a precision backhand or Buddy Franklin slotting a goal from the boundary …

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May 3, 2021

Difference between efficient animals & efficient systems

In intensive animal production systems, like pig or chicken production, or even a beef feedlot, the aim is to produce animals that grow fast while eating less, often referred to as feed efficiency. This, of course, makes perfect sense. The biggest...

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February 10, 2021

The genetics of more lambs

Almost without exception, if I ask a sheep producer what they would like to improve in their sheep they tell me they would like to wean more lambs. Sometimes they are keen to improve the scanning percentage but mostly they are keen to improve lamb...

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December 22, 2020

Magnificent Maidens

Getting a good lambing result out of maiden ewes remains as a challenge for many producers. The traditional maiden ewe is one that goes to the ram for the first time at 19 months of age. However, in a maternal composite, first cross ewe...

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November 26, 2020

Know more about footrot

The trait ‘susceptibility to footrot’ is quoted as FR. FR describes a sheep’s susceptibility to footrot using it’s genetic difference in footrot score. This score measures how well a sheep retains foot health under a challenge with virulent footrot.

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July 31, 2020

Interview with Dawson Bradford

Dawson Bradford is one of Australia's most successful performance breeders and the Hillcroft Farms name can be found in many high performance Poll Dorset and White Suffolk pedigrees. He is now focussed on breeding shedding sheep and is again topping

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June 18, 2020

Do breeding values really work

There are filing cabinets full of data that show that using breeding values is the best method of achieving rapid genetic gain across lots of different species and applications. In this zoom meeting Ferg provides some of this evidence.....

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May 30, 2020

Why using breeding values isn’t selling out on tradition

There is a sweet spot of combining traditional skills with the latest science to enable rapid genetic gain. It is important to not confuse the tools with the desired outcome. The type of sheep or cattle people want to breed is a personal decision..

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May 10, 2020

Interview with Ian Robertson

Ian Robertson is the manager of the nucleus flock for Merinotech WA and has been since its inception. He is responsible for achieving an amazing rate of genetic gain across a range of traits and breeding...

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April 26, 2020

What will the skinny twin ewes eat?

By optimising ewe nutrition between scanning and lambing, we can give ewes the best chance of having thriving lambs in spring. Managing ewes based on their condition score and the number of lambs they are carrying helps us do this most effectively.

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March 1, 2020

The reproduction snowball

Having more lambs weaned per ewe put to the ram has a multitude of benefits to a sheep enterprise. The beautiful thing is that these benefits are compounding or in other words these benefits snowball. If you are running a sheep enterprise...

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February 10, 2020

Interview with Cara Allan

As technology develops so does our ability to understand sheep behaviour at a whole new level. Our collaborative project with AWI, Murdoch Universtiy, Muresk and Agriculture Victoria is looking to measure feed intake in sheep in real time...

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January 5, 2020

Interview with Dr David Scobie

Recently we've been working with Dr Scobie on the flystrike work on behalf of MLA. Scobie, as he prefers to be known, is originally from South Australia and has been living and working in NZ since completing his PhD. Ferg had a chance to speak....

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December 20, 2019

Farmer = People that Farm - #3

Growing up on our family farm in the Victoria Mallee, I had four fantastic role models, Mum and Dad on one side of the dam, and Dad's parents, Mama and Pa on the other. Pa had suffered a blood-clot in his leg and lost his leg from above the knee...

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November 13, 2019

Farmer = People that Farm - #2

In the first article in this series, I discussed how the large variation in uptake of technology across agriculture is actually not different to the level of technology use within the (very much larger) non-farming population...

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October 6, 2019

Farmer = People that Farm - #1

Maybe I am stating the obvious, but farmers are indeed humans that farm. The reason I am making this obvious statement is two-fold. Firstly, for much of my career I have been involved in discussions, work shops and funding bids to improve the...

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September 22, 2019

Structural faults - what are we missing?

If sheep and cows were born with wheels, breeding them would be a whole lot easier! I know much has been said about us “numbers breeders” but as you hopefully know by now, we are also keen on functional animals with good structure and in merino...

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August 24, 2019

CV or not CV

During my PhD I did a very large experiment to try and further understand the physiological consequences of differences in muscling, fatness and growth breeding values in Merino sheep. It was the last and largest of the five experiments that I...

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August 10, 2019

Whole body energy and it's importance in sheep breeding

What is whole-body energy and why is it important? Whole-body energy is a term that we use to describe the total stores of energy that an animal has to draw from in tough times or lactation. It is largely driven by the total amount of fat the...

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July 6, 2019

Seen one, seen them all?

For the general population that hasn’t spent as long in the sheep yards as this readership, all sheep look the same. Even us sheep enthusiasts could be forgiven for thinking that there isn’t really a lot that sets them apart from each other...

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June 22, 2019

Short shank redemption

It is just over 14 years since my new wife and I packed up the Mazda and headed across the Nullarbor to start my PhD with the late Dr Norm Adams in Perth. I was keen to understand the implications of selection for carcass traits in merinos and ...

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June 19, 2019

Genetics of Condition Score

Since 2013, we've been running a central progeny test on behalf of The New Zealand Merino Company and the Merino industry in New Zealand. Any form of progeny testing is fantastic because it is a fantastic demonstration of the power of genetics...

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May 25, 2019

Does 90% of their breeding go down their throat?

"90% of the breeding goes down their throat"... most of us will have heard this statement, probably hundreds of times. It is often said to justify a belief that one should worry less about the genetics of the animals and more about how...

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