 I'd like to now introduce our guest farmer for the day who's going to share their case study with us, Chad Burbridge. Chad is a third generation farmer based 30Ks out of Murray Bridge in the Murray Malley. He runs 3,800 marinos and crops 2,400 hectares. And Chad is also a current producer on the advisory panel for Sheet Connect SA. So without further ado, I'll hand you over to Chad. My name's Chad Burbridge, obviously. I'm 3,800 years generally. Minimum of 5,000 sheep on the farm, 6,000 acres of crop. I love my wool and marinos, so that's probably where my passion is. I've got to ask to talk about the 1% that I do on the farm. When I started thinking about that, I thought, well, I don't think I do any 1% that most people don't, but so I struggled a bit with that. And then I thought, well, maybe I'll go to what people, when people ask me what I would do that. So then I started going back the last 10 years or so and thinking, well, people have said to me, why do you do that? So I've gone through a list of things that people have asked me. So probably one of the earliest things I did was went through trace element side of things on the farm, blood tests, soil tests, liver tests, all those sorts of things. Basically the first one I did was formulate a dry feed mix. So on our stubbles, we had to level out that nutrition balance, utilise some feed better. And then I created a green feed one as well for my farm. The main reason I had to do it was my salts at sort of high 15,000 parts in my water, so nothing eats a soft block or anything like that. And then I went on to really pushing the lambing side. So there's one specialised for lambing like Deb was talking before. Yes, and I love that product for the lambing phase. Yeah, I get very low U-mortality, like less than 1% through all that phase. The biggest notice with the dry feed mix was the tensile strength. I probably gained five newtons easily when I started using it. Again, the smooth muscle function with the lambing part. And yeah, the lamb seemed to grow very, very well for the first few months. And EIDs, another one I used fairly early, a while ago. And probably the main reason I wanted it was to know what was born of twin and what was born of single, and especially what was from a maiden U. That way, come class on time. I could know if it was a twin out of a maiden U, she's never going to be as good as a single out of an old U. And that's normally where all the best genetics are from the maiden Us. I also split lambing, so I have two lambings, roughly, 1700 and 2000 sort of thing. That way I can use higher N-rams twice each year, spreads the risks, obviously written up there. It's a lot harder to manage, but I enjoy it with the other benefits come with it. All my Us are in skin type groups, not in age groups. And so that way I can always match a ram to the group of Us. So I'm always correctly mating towards the animal that I want. Most people think it's very hard, but I've got no more mobs than everyone else. So I just run them in skin types, not age groups. It helps a lot with getting less of those obvious culls come classing time. So there's a much more even line of young Us all the time coming through. Also been six months shearing for a long time. And normally try and plan six to eight weeks before lambing, just Us for the Us sort of stuff. By doing that, also any break that does happen from ill health is right near the tip as well. So I generally get pretty good premiums for high Newton Wolves. I used to get discounted reasonably well for over lengths, because I'm only running 17, 18 micro and stuff. And yeah, I was pushing out over 120 mils each year. So the discount for that was far higher than going slightly under length. What's your average six months shearing like for now? It depends on the time of the year. But the lowest buzzer would be 58 mils sort of thing, up to mid 70s. And is it your, do you shear in February or February? Shear late January and then late March. So I'm shearing yesterday and tomorrow. And so is that the time of the year when it's shorter? Normally the one with the lamb on it is the shortest, generally. Also like to try and keep my best Us longer. So I don't care if there is six year old U, I'd rather have them in my best genetics there and get another lamb out of them. So that means that I can go a bit harder on my younger Us to start with. I wean on a date, not on anything else. So yeah, pretty much I mark my lambs in the first week after the last one's born. And then I like to leave six weeks for recovery and then they're weaned as simple as that. No questions, helps with your recovery and I can manage my pastures a bit better as to allocating lambs to the best feed possible. I've started making U lambs in the last few years. Yeah, so there we get six pregnancies out of some of my best Us by doing that. But yeah, U lambs is a lot harder and a lot more complicated, especially in this earlier lambing sort of area. At the moment, lamb survival is a big one for me. That's where I've had a lot of focus the last few years. Everything's scanned, multiple triplets. Trying to reduce the twin mobs as small as possible. Yeah, and take all my singles out to sort of 400 in a mob and I get sort of 90, I think I've averaged 97% survival in the singles for the last few years and about 0.3 for U deaths in the singles as well. Yeah, match feed to a few of these. With the twins, I've been trying to put out multiple feed stations just to try and spread them out when they're lambing. I've just rather than them all going back to the same spot all the time and especially the U's teasers as well, so some of them lambs can get a bit tight or a big flush at the same sort of time. Yeah, I don't accept triads anymore. I pretty much get one chance in the arena and then they'll get put to a terminal and then if I don't, you can see then they're out no matter what their age. Yeah, just measure lamb and U survival in the last few years. I'm still nowhere near happy with my twins' survival. Yeah, only talking high 60s, 70% sort of stuff for the twins, but yeah, really high 90s for singles, so still got plenty of work to do on that. The other issue I also see with profitability is sustainability. We're not going to be able to use chemicals, not going to be able to mules and we'll lose market access, so it's a big thought pattern a few years ago of mine. So then, yeah, I love playing with genetics and I'm all non-mules for a while now and yeah, I hate wrinkles full stop and yeah, more recently I started to score my better end stuff for a brief cover, a brief tranquil. I haven't used a fly-up preventative for 15 years or more. If I get two or three body strike out of 5,000 sheep a year, I would be at the high end. I don't select for micron or anything anymore. I used to, now it's just got to be soft and white and the bolder the better. Just want low curvature, bold walls and all that sustainability stuff comes from the skin. So just, it's a high priority of mine is the skin like you saw from the mating groups earlier. One of the things that I do that's probably not for everyone or not just for commercial stuff is I've been A.I.ing for a long time and I've been genomics testing some of my better end just to see where they sit in recent times. I've just formed renaestud and I've been pre-demoing rams for a long time. I've done some new lamb trial work with Adelaide Uni at the moment and did some trial work with lamb survivor last year and some more again this year with Adelaide Uni. I'm on sheep genetics for the last few years. Probably what I want you guys from what I do is if you're only getting 110% that's just not good enough. We've got too many deaths. Two years ago I averaged 124% lambing which was one of the highest in the area but I still left two full semi-loads of lamb sitting on the paddock that I lost. So we're happy with 120% but yeah when you think about what you've lost it's pretty huge. And I don't try and get more used into lamb because I'm already scanning high 140s, low 150s including maidens. So yeah that's not a push of mine anymore. My push now is keeping them alive. And you have to understand ASBVs. If it's the only thing you'll learn from today is just go home and learn ASBVs for sheep and how they fit into your operation. And match your U-type to your area. It's probably a big thing that a few years ago people influencing me were saying you should have this type of sheep or you should do this or you should do that but a lot of the time it's not right for either my management or for my environment. So just learning what suited what I wanted and what I needed. Yeah non-mules and just start breading towards it whatever you do. Coals are already talking that they won't buy meat from mules sheep. So it's going to happen full stop.