 I'd just like to introduce our last speaker for today, Mark Ferguson. Mark is speaking today on making the most of your genetics. Mark is the CEO at NextGen Agri, a consulting and innovation company based in Christchurch, New Zealand. He is the host of a head shepherd podcast and leads the development of the hub, the Farm Fit U workshop and the growing U masterclass. He and the team at NextGen Agri work with progressive stud and commercial producers across Australia and New Zealand, helping them breed the best sheep and cattle for their situation. Mark grew up on the family farm in Victoria Mallee and has spent his career in the livestock industry working throughout Australia and New Zealand. Mark also has completed a PhD in merino genetics in Western Australia. Today he will talk to us through typical mistakes people make when it comes to genetics in their livestock business and offer suggestions for how to avoid these mistakes. The session will cover both the art and science of implementing a breeding program and how to implement a successful breeding strategy. Thanks very much and thanks for the opportunity to be in the sunny South Australia. I've been travelling in Oz for just on a month I think today. So if I look a bit weary I am. But it's been great to be back home. So yeah I live in Christchurch at the moment and we operate both sides and COVID hasn't been great for that. But I want to talk today about genetics because that's what I'm passionate about and like to talk about. And I've titled it a little bit of art and a whole lot of science because I think that's what sheep breeding is. I think generally in the past we've probably thought of the opposite, a whole lot of art and a little bit of science. And I think that's the discussion we want to have. We've had great intros from both Nathan and Chad and have sort of set me up pretty well to have this discussion. I just want to point out that Bill Walker is going to walk out halfway through my presentation. He's already told me that. And that's because he's going to the oil. So I'd probably do the same to him. So that's fine. The world is changing and we've heard a bit about that today and you'll hear this all the time in the media. But our consumer set is a completely different consumer set than what we've had 20 years ago and it's changing all the time. We're getting way more connected to our consumers. But so our food and fiber and our story is in their lounge rooms now and in their kitchens now. And that makes, creates all sorts of concerns in our heads but also creates heaps of opportunity. And I always think about this sort of stuff when I'm thinking about genetics because genetics is slow. Genetics is a 10-year game. You don't get to do, you don't get to, you can change your vaccine practice and your nutrition practice and have an impact within six months or 12 months. In genes, you have to have a plan and you have to actually implement that plan because it's a slow process as you all know. So we have to be thinking about what our consumers are gonna be doing in 10 years because that's what we're breeding for today. The rams that you buy this year will still have genetics in your flocks. The bulls you buy will still have genetics in your herds in the next 10 years. I reckon there's three mega trends that are converging on the sheep industry and they're all relevant to the how we go about breeding animals. Hyper-transparency, there's no great, there'll be no great surprise to you that we're being watched more than we've been watched before, more than definitely the generation before us has been. So what we do on farm matters because a lot of people are watching and a lot of people wanna reward that. And if you look at the RWS premiums at the moment, so responsible bullsourcing standards, sitting about three bucks at the moment from a non-RWS product. So a massive premium because of this because they've got people on farm doing audits, producing wool in a way that their consumers are happy with. So that's really starting to bite. I think carbon's gonna be massive, that's not any surprise to you either. Climate change, whatever you wanna call it, the fact is that our consumers are gonna be very carbon conscious. So how efficiently are on farm will matter because there's only really one place a lot of our brands get to actually try and tweak their carbon as what they're gonna encourage us to do on farm, I reckon. There's not much they can do within manufacturing. They'll be starting to put the pressure back on farms. And the other, I guess mega trend or trend is technology. We're in a place now that's probably best we've ever been in the sheep industry. We're actually starting to catch up with some of our competitive industries, sheep and cattle. We're starting to see some technology evolve which is gonna make it a lot easier for us to do what we do because there's a lot of concern when you start thinking about some of these other things. And so animal welfare starts becoming front and center in that game because that's what matters to our consumers. And I love this quote that if we care about animal welfare then we need to also care about animal breeding from a guy in Canada. But that's true. Our genetics has the greatest and Chad's just talked about it. Genetics has a massive impact or has a potential to have a massive impact on how our animals are running on our systems because we can breed them to be much less reliant on chemicals, to be much less reliant on interventions and still be healthy, productive and profitable. I like to use this number a bit. I don't know how accurate it is, I just made it up. But on average, most of you will get 30 opportunities to make selections on your genetics of your farms. So before that someone older than you is telling you what to do and after that someone younger than you is again telling you what to do. And so there's about that middle period where you get to make decisions on the bulls or rams that you're buying and the replacement heifers or use that you keep. And the point of that number is that it's not very big. There's only 30 opportunities to get this right and so that deserves a bit of respect. You get to change, you get to do lots of things on the farm every day, you get to feed your sheep a fair few times in your careers but when it goes to actually buying that ram or that bull 30 times. So you see sort of people rock up about 30 minutes until the hammer starts flying and they're trying to pick out some rams to buy, they're eating a steak sandwich and they're catching up with their mate that they didn't catch up with the 40 and then they're starting to make some ram selection decisions about somewhere in that midst of craziness. I don't reckon that's enough respect for the job that you got to do on that day because of the power that it can have. That's what 30 years can look like so that's just weaning weight. And that's what genetic gain can look like over that 30 year period if you do it well. So two and a half per cent is definitely achievable. You're never going to sleep for one trait so where it goes to doesn't matter. It's more the difference between the lines. The sheep industry and the beef industry don't get anywhere near one per cent on average. We sit somewhere here in our industry genetic gain which is pretty pathetic. The dairy industry, the individual chicken industries, the pork industry, they all sit out here somewhere. They're well above sitting at sort of scientific optimum. Our industry sits somewhere here so there's this big opportunity on each of your individual enterprises to be on one of these lines and there's people in this room that are on one of those lines but there's probably lots of people in the room that aren't on one of those lines and I guess this gap is what encourages me to get out of bed every morning is because when I see what genetics can do on farm and we work on lots of farms, we start closing that gap and we start really increasing. I like Chad talking about how many truckloads of lambs don't turn up and that's exactly what happens. When you get the genetics right and you get your management right there's truckloads extra lambs there's several bales more wool. I guess the point of this slide is start right now. If you hang around for 10 years and then decide to have a crack you will never close that gap because it's compounding. You get gain on gain. It's like compounding interest. You can notice those lines widen every year so sort of hanging around 10 years and thinking about it sitting on the fence and then going right I'm gonna have a crack. You'll never catch up to the point that you would have been if you had have actually started back day one. Obviously you can sell all your sheep by someone else's and get up the chain of it but if we just think about genetic processes we've got to get on board and start going as early as we can. One of the things that I see one of the I guess myths in the industry is hybrid vigor it's a real thing but I see people using it like it's the only way you can do genes. Like you can only, you just cross something that's unrelated you get a big lift from those two different animals and therefore and you just live on those lifts and the first gosh industry is one of those but lots of people are sort of thinking about how they can just maximize this little bit of hybrid vigor and then that'll do that sort of genetics done for them. The maximum hybrid vigor will give you is about 15% most of it's less than that and so on that time scale if you're doing it 2.5% you'll close that gap down in seven years. So seven years of genetic gain closes down hybrid vigor every year after that you're in front. That doesn't mean you don't do hybrid vigor you try and buy someone that's doing this and so if you combine genetic gain so if you're going to buy a grape bottle restaurant from Inverbackie or something like that, Linton, versus a good, versus a grape and you're buying rainos that you know are from a great source as well then that lift that you'll get will be doubling up that genetic gain. So don't rely on hybrid vigor as your only practice you need to be both finding genetic gain or sources of genetic gain as well as if your system allows using that hybrid vigor to take that extra step. So who in the room is making genetic gain? Hands up, some aren't or some don't want to, some aren't sure. So there'll be some that are and I guess the next question is how do you know? Because you can tell me you're making genetic gain and that might be your walls getting wider or your balls are getting bigger or your steers are getting bigger but often we just think we're making genetic gain because we're doing stuff we're selecting rams every year I go here I'll keep my young years because they should be my best genetics. If you've bought the rams in the same way from the same place that hasn't made any genetic gain in the last 10 years your young years are exactly the same as your old years. You actually haven't changed those at all. So I guess I'm not gonna ask you to answer these questions I would if there was a smaller room and we had time to go through them but I would really encourage you when you walk out of here is to think about am I making the best genetic gain possible on my farm? Am I next generation of views on my farm gonna be as good as they can be compared to what my last year's views were? Because if the answer to that question is no then you've got to start thinking about how am I gonna set myself up to make that gain that I should be making? And what the enemy of genetic gain is error and error is everything that we see when we go ramp buying and we go selecting use. If we walk into a ramship we're working to classing classics ram sale that's down here in September 5, was it Bill? September 9, somewhere there. We walk into a tent there. We've got, I don't know how many vendors, 40 vendors? 25 vendors, all different nutritional strategies all different farms have come together on a single day and we're there and we're gonna try and buy a ram to take home and make genetic gain. There's heaps of error in that decision. We're gonna have singles and twins we're gonna have rams born for maidens more rams born from old years we're gonna have rams born early in the season late in the season we're gonna have different porridge as they were fed we're gonna have all these different things that are on the day are all there confusing the crap out of us making it a really hard decision. Now often you're not in that mixed multi-vendor sale you're in your own, you're in a single place but often you might be buying rams from a couple of places and so a lot of the error that, well a lot of what you're seeing is just noise just white noise. The genes are what you're trying to get at and that was Chad's point if you're not using breeding bays to get through that error and break down and actually make an accurate decision you really are putting your farming with your arms tied behind your back because all we can see is phenotype this is what we see that's what we're looking at when we're looking at all those different rams it's what we see, what we measure where they got, what their micron is what their fleece what is what their scan was, their raw scan all that sort of stuff is just the phenotype it's made up of genetics obviously and environment often we sort of some parts we think are all genetic when really there's heaps of this environmental impact and that can be all the things that I've already talked about what they've been fed, how old they are how old their mum was whether a single twin or triplet all that stuff will impact on what we're looking at on that day and that's both when you're classing a use which we'll cover at the end as well as when you're selecting your rams and it's just three quick graphs I got told not to bombard you with graphs and so I try not very hard not to but I'm a scientist at the end of the day so I've got to have a few and each of these graphs are the same this is the breeding value of the soil on this axis these are all out of a New Zealand merino project test that we ran for seven or eight years this is the breeding value of on this axis and this is the raw data of those progeny of that progeny group and so this is fleece weight on this example and so the first, your first bit of information from this graph is that the breeding values work as the breeding value for fleece weight goes up the fleece weight in their progeny also goes up not rocket science but that's what we do that's what for 20 years we've been seeing this sort of stuff happen but look where and each of these dots sorry is an individual group of progeny from a sire every on every case except one the single-born progeny are cutting more wool than the twin-born progeny and often that's 200 grams, 250 grams, 300 grams every time that's what happens and that's what's happening twin-born progeny have less follicle development in utero they cut less wool for their lifetime if you've done lifetime view management you would have heard all that stuff but that's what when you have a look if you're looking at a raw breeding a raw fleece weight on a ram all this crap's at play all this stuff is confusing confusing you and so I'll run through a couple of different traits to just to make that point stronger so this is wrinkle now see twin-born progeny are planer than single-born progeny so if you start to say I want to go non-mules then you have to be careful that you don't well it's nice if you just all select the twins but you have to be aware that singles or twins out of maidens can be a full wrinkle score lower just because they're environment not because they're genetics so again wrinkle is higher in single-born progeny and then fiber diameter the same thing twin-born progeny are stronger than single-born progeny because that secondary follicle development means they've got less follicles less and so are a bit broader so all those things are playing out when we're looking at a RAM and they're just reno examples that I'm using but it plays out across all the traits I think Nathan probably covered this pretty well we see this industry sort of I think it's getting less but there used to be an industry argy-bargy about whether breeding values work or they don't or whether they're good or they're bad the reality is I'm over it they do work and they work really well and I think as Nathan pouring out you need both the visual inspection and the data to make a really good breeding decision we don't need this crap in our industry there's enough people having a crack at our industry we don't need to be fighting within our industry we need to be to actually working together and breeding better sheep so don't get the tools confused with a desired outcome we often, yeah, we want to breed a great sheep and we want to, you're in a camp in the end of the day you end up either in the breeding mode camp or either in the soft rolling skin camp or you're in the objective data that doesn't use either of those things or you're in a completely phenotype only camp for you as commercial ram buyers and bull buyers just get really focused on what you want to achieve don't worry about the camps start using, finding the data that matters the desired outcome, your desired outcome is the only thing that really matters and then you use all the available tools to get that desired outcome and it might be whatever your sheep type and whatever you want to work on is completely up to you and it might be completely different to the neighbours but you can still use the tools to design your sheep so the question isn't whether they work the question is how you combine those breeding values and how you combine breeding value with subjective assessment to breed your perfect sheep this is just an example of where things can go wrong so this is out of the Balmoral MLP project Reno Lifetime Productivity Project funded by AWI these are three-year-old, three-year-old youths this was their lamb weaning percentage in that year and this is their fleece weight to body weight ratio so that's a 10% is a 60 kilo U cutting six kilos whereas a 12% is a 60 kilo U cutting 7.2 kilos and so, and this has been shown in Africa and everywhere when you go for higher productivity of wool so higher fleece weight to body weight ratio reproduction starts falling down and so that doesn't mean you can't have fleece weight and reproduction and growth but you have to think about how you're going to design your sheep because if you don't look at, if you just go for fleece weight then you will start losing lamb weaning percentage if you just go for lamb weaning percentage you'll start losing fleece weight so the beauty of breeding value is is that you can start to break these known correlations and actually build the perfect sheep for you as long as you know what you're doing and as long as you use them well you can actually design an animal but if you're not conscious of all the things all the strings that you're playing with you can have these sort of correlations start playing out and you end up having an outcome that you weren't actually trying to design for just, and this is the same data so I threw this one in there even on the hard traits number of lamb's weaned, 5% heritable you think, oh bugger, that wouldn't even bother this is the number of lamb's weaned breeding value of those size in the MLP project that's the U progeny at three year old lamb weaning is very tightly correlated with so like Nathan pointed out you can predict the future breeding values are very much the best prediction tool for the potential outcome so that's a trait that is very hard to shift if, or very lowly heritable but very clearly what's happening in those size I think that's it for the graphs so hopefully Jody, but we work from 11 to 44 micron the principle is applied it doesn't matter what we do we've got ultra fine flocks sitting down we've got a ram that only throws under 12 micron in one of our clients we've got others that I don't know what a micron of a Hereford is, but so we work across all these different sheep types across pretty much every sheep growing in Australia and both islands in New Zealand and wherever we go the principle's applied the breeding value principle's applied it's the aim that is very personal to that individual enterprise and the way you use the tools the accuracy with you make selection decisions determines the rate of gain that you'll make it's as simple as that clarify your aim, use all the tools you can and you will literally your gain will be absolutely aligned with how well you use the tools we've covered this already most of what we see is not due to genes all this stuff, in this state you've got people put them in sheds you've got different locations you've got single twin you've got different age you've got different feeding regimes so there's a lot of things that are confusing us when we're making our selection decisions and it depends on which trait you're after as to how much heritability matters but heritability is the proportion of the variation you see between individuals that can be explained by genes so in reproduction 5% heritable, 95% is white noise so if you're going into a ramp sale and you're buying twin-born progeny the chances are you're buying a progeny out of a three-year-old youth who was early born herself and has been pretty fat for a lifetime if you're going there and buy a high number of lamps weaned breeding vape or the new ones in litter site the new breeding vape for reproduction then you know you're going to get what you're asking for resistant to worms again when we're starting to think about our consumers drenches and drenches are going to be on the nose 20% heritable so 20% of the variation we see between individuals is genetic out here at fiber diameter literally if you're blind you can sleep for fiber diameter highly heritable and we saw in my god madness days that you can shift it really really quickly if you focus on it you can ruin everything else in the sheep if you don't do that carefully but we know now that you can sleep for fiber diameter and keep a lot of those other good things or actually make gain a lot of those other good things as well so big variation in the sort of traits that we're playing with but breeding vape is take all that into account so when you're looking at a breeding vape you don't actually have to know any of this stuff because you get exactly well you get half of exactly what it's telling you that that ram will do the key question in all this discussion really is what do you want to improve most is because it doesn't matter what I mean I've got my preferred sheep type and it really doesn't matter I think I've probably said that three times already it's what do you want to improve most and that's the thought process that should be going through your heads hopefully by the end of this discussion is what are the traits that you want to improve most and how am I going to actually do that I like this quote as well breed a profitable sheep and learn to like what it looks like not many people will ever do that I can't even do that but we do need to be wary of types that are in our head like we've got they've got to look like this to be productive they've got to look like this so they can walk to the bore or whatever do they have you ever tested whether they can walk with if they've got shorter legs can they still get there there's lots of things we hear in our industry that were were relevant in the time because we didn't have anything else we just had we knew that that sheep got the job done so we're going to sleep for that sheep type we need to be careful that our sheep types and our sort of our kind of picture in our head of what an animal should look like is actually a line with profitability or is it just a line with what someone else's ideas were about about profitability or was it a was it at a time where we actually couldn't do anything differently like open heads you can't have open heads because they cut no wool there's heaps of sheep in the industry that have low low head cover breeding ways and massive fleece weight breeding ways so you can do both those things we had all these things in our heads before we had tools so what I really encourage people to do is is work out which traits are for them and I want you to think about it across four aspects because if I asked you which traits you want to improve most the first thing you're going to tell me is something about making more money it's going to be either more fleece weight more weaning weight more lambs on the ground more lamb survival which is probably sits both in and save you do a lot of customer but often the first thing I hear from people when I ask them about what they want to improve is the make-your-money traits what I would encourage you to do is think about what are the traits that save you money what are the jobs that you actually that are actually costing you in the business that could be removed or reduced by genetics I've never actually talked to a farmer that said they've got too much time in the hands that they're just looking for another hobby because they're really bored so traits that save your time are really important as well and in our context in New Zealand that's traits like foot rot no one likes foot rotting sheep no one likes dagging sheep they are two traits that are heritable and about the same level 20% we can remove them and reduce them and reduce that time factor so I would encourage you to and we've got a plan that we go through but make your money save you money save your time and delight a customer are the ways that that I would think you should think about your breeding plan not just five traits that that make you more money because that that runs the risk of designing an animal that's actually not that good for you or your farm because it just creates more labour if you if they're all just output traits and you're not not taking care of that animal itself so um yeah five traits we used to say four I say five now because people used to argue with me about four all the time but so in a commercial setting if you focus on five traits that you want to improve you can you can achieve that if you're a lint and arty and you've got you've got if you're a stud breeder you're I expect you to be chasing eight nine ten traits because you've got you've got more data you've got more information and you're more fanatical um the so five traits is what you should focus on and make sure ideally they've they come across those five those four different pillars of of making money saving money save your time or do a lot of customer um I just threw a few slides in here on on one of my pet topics um and then I'll get back to the to the main show but um there's a bit of noise around particularly in the cattle industry about feed efficiency and so feed efficiency by definition it will by the definition that's used is animal that does more with less so you've put in a feedlot and it'll grow out will either eat the same amount and grow more it'll grow the same and eat less so it's actually converting its feed to meat in a in a more efficient manner we have to be really careful about those animals because they are by definition not very good at running in in production systems they're good in feedlots but they're not good as as used to to run around what I like to think about is systems efficiency used that will run around and by by storing fat when they've got excess and then using that fat when they haven't actually creating an efficient system and that's much better then then this feed efficient animal because you're not running a sheep in feedlots you're running a sheep on on a grass curve that looks like this every year you've got drought every year you've got plenty um you might have fallen under a thunderstorm this year and you got feed at the moment or you might not have and you haven't um and so you need a U that's going right I'm going to put that fat down now because it's not going to be there in three months time or hopefully in three months it is but in nine months time it won't be um and so we need to think about that so a resilient U or a system efficient U is one that can handle high stocking rate um is handle high welfare and balance per head production so that's when we talk about selection for positive fat and muscle that's what we're thinking about we're thinking about a resilient animal that is system efficient not not efficient on our own our own basis and this is what pretty much how it plays out um use that are in higher condition score use less energy so if you're if you're in a half a condition score fatter you require 0.8 megajoules uh per day and that's 12% of her maintenance requirements so 12% less grain or loosen or or whatever you're feeding to to maintain weight and so those animals less energy to maintain their weight or they lose less weight on the same energy you provide so breeding animals like this that are naturally in higher condition which are the ones that are higher fat and muscle are more efficient in the system but if you feed them as a young animal in a feedlot they're not as they're not as efficient so we're going to be really careful with because this is what we want we're designing animals that need less feed on on your farms or can be run at higher stocking rates um so just quickly with um a couple of slides on on female selection I don't know what number shout me out a number how many what's your culling rate in your in your use or heifers in your young replacement sheep for cows is it somewhere between 25 and 50 yeah cool so with all normality applies it's good so we've got about between a quarter and a half of our animals young animals get kicked out of our farms every year um and we do that with the best information we can but we have to be really careful because this is one of our sources of error one source of error is how well you buy your rams the second source of error is how well you keep your replacement females chad already pointed out the tendency is for you to boot out a twin out of a maiden that's uh that's the highest likelihood the next likelihood is to kick out a twin um because they're the animals that are less likely and in a cattle sense that's kicking out a a car from a heifer or heifer from a heifer they're going to be smaller and under done but they may be the best genetics so we have to be trying to think about how we do this job as best we can and it's not easy um because unless you've got some data you can't do much about it and chad's point was spot on you have to have recorded who was single born twin born out of a maiden or out of a mature age you to actually make any useful decisions um heaps of stuff on this and I'll go through them really quick no I won't actually go through them but when you're looking at an animal your eyes are playing tricks on you because you are absolutely prone to selecting an early born single out of a four and five year old you because they are the shiniest views in the in the mob if we look at just the twin effect and I'll go through it really quickly but this is merino tech data over in WA we use them a lot because they're not like crazy about how much data they collect 60 or 70 traits per animal every year um but if we looked at just what twins do they're two kilos lighter they cut as I pointed out it's a stronger wall they cut less wall its staple length is shorter they've lower luster lower crimp definition it looks drier it's got blockier there's all these things that when we when you're going through a race of views or your class or is all of this stuff adds up that you're just kicking out twins because they just all those little things make them look a bit less less nice so that's exactly what plays out the MLP project has shown that they've had all industry classes go through lots of flocks and repeatedly in those early classing years disproportionate numbers of twins are getting kicked out by those like professional industry classes because of all this stuff because they don't look as good but that's not genetic that's all just environment that's just the fact that they happen to be a twin or that would be a twin from maidens so that's at play every time you color sheep this stuff's at play so the the answer there is class those animals in their groups singles from maidens in a group twins from maidens in a group singles from mixed age twins from mixed age so if you do that your brain naturally when you're classing sheep I don't know how you go but my brain just naturally just locks in on culling whatever the cull rate is you just like and it'll it'll change it'll adjust with whichever mob you're in and so if you do that you won't have because if you bring them all together you've got this big shiny single and the next one you see is a twin from maiden and you're looking at it going that's a crap sheep just get it rid of it put red on as fast as you can whereas if it's in its cohort of group with with other twins from maidens then you're gonna go well that looks good that looks good that one's a bit rough and and you'll and you won't fail from from that lack of error. The next and best step is to start measuring stuff and you'll need EID to do that obviously but weaning weight at 8 to 12 month condition score these are sort of my I guess my pick list of things that if you're a marino enterprise and adjust with with other enterprises but weaning weight condition score at 12 months because that's really well correlated with fat and muscle so we get that resilience out of out of that measurement without spending the four or five bucks to do the the scan 12 month weight fleece weight and micron at some at that whichever shearing is best ideally not one with a lamb tip on it still and that first pregnancy and then whether they're wet and dry and if you get all that information we can actually start making a pretty handy decision as long as we know that they were single or twin or out of a maiden or not and we can actually start making good decisions about which user staying in our floxy for in a marino sense and similar if you're in a in a composite maternal or other maternal. Just some another data from from marino tech this is these they didn't cull always always cull their two year old you so this is their subsequent lambs after their first lambing so if they were dry in the first lambing or didn't lamb at all they had 2.2 lambs for the rest of their life if they lambed and lost so the wet dryers they had 2.8 if they read a single that first crack they they read three for the rest of their life and if they read twins the first of the 3.2 so those numbers are low because of the stud things different things get removed but but the trend is obvious you can that single that first maiden lambing is a pretty good indicator of what's going to happen for the rest of life so if you're only to ever do it if you put a bit of effort in if you do it as maidens you can probably then forget about those use and just cull the dryers or whatever or cull the ones that get crooked feet or or that hold up your dog or whatever your culling on and and you'll go pretty well I think Nathan already pointed this out but we are just buying bags of jeans we have to what they look like you can take a photo of them put them on your mantelpiece if you like but the reality is it's just swinging between the legs is the only bit that matters they're just a mobile delivery system for jeans and so we have to we have to think about using those breeding bears all as much as we can to make that decision obviously you look at destruction all the other stuff that's important and we spend most of their time doing that ironically but but they are just just a bag of jeans and so you can get them from a range of ways I would encourage you to to look for more than what you're being shown stud breeders are awesome at showing you the stuff that they're good at really really good at that I was going through a ram stud site this morning and there's there's traits there that aren't even that you wouldn't ever look like in a look at in a merino catalog and they're there because they actually happen to be quite good at those traits always ask for if you've got your five traits they might not be in the ram catalog that you're going to but if they're using breeding bears there's a good chance they've got them they just haven't put them in the catalog because they've only got 10 spots to put stuff if you ring them up two weeks before you can ask them about the traits are important to you and they'll most stud breeders will be really keen because they've spent some after Sunday afternoon collecting that data and they actually want to give it to somebody and so you can actually get more information than what might be in your catalogs I reckon we tend to in the ram buying part of our business or bull buying part of our business don't use the same logic as we would if we're buying glyphosate or if we're buying drench so it's okay to compare different ram and bull sides it's okay to ring up two different people and ask them what they've got on offer this year you don't have to just stick on on one place it's great to be loyal but you need to buy on merit great people can still breed the wrong sheep for you so just because they're your uncle or your auntie or or a mate from footy they can still be breeding the wrong sheep for you and so it doesn't make them a bad person doesn't mean you've got a bad friendship it just means it's not the place you should be buying your rams or your bulls so I would encourage you to have the same level of logic and the same smart thinking you have as business people when you're going to deciding about where you're going to buy your rams and I would encourage you to buy an active ingredient not on brand name so these are all paracetamol CH9 NO2 we probably all go into a shop and might buy penadol because that's what our tried and true we know that's we know what it does all these other things do exactly the same stuff and it's the same in your sheep as long as you've got the type of sheep you're after and you're in the right spot then you can just buy and breeding those on those animals and the more you make that decision about I'm buying an active ingredient because I know what I want and I'm really determined to get what I want the less you buy penadol because this stuff might be two bucks cheaper and get exactly the same thing for your business and then I think finally buy well bred not well fed there's your user in paddocks eating grass I think South Australia is probably the the worst state for feeding up rams there's some amazing looking ramsheds in this state be prepared to reward those rambredes they're actually willing to run commercially their rams there's no point going and buying the biggest highest fed sheep and then expecting that will be the right ship for you it might be if you've got all the right breeding values but it may well not be and so be careful that what you see on the day you're buying bags of jeans and you're buying and you're buying on on active ingredient I would encourage you to have a plan we've got a plan on our website I think I think it's still there I just ten years now look from like what are those five traits importantly what am I going to do to make sure that I'm improving those five traits that's it for me thank you