ANALYSIS
Future
What will the sheep of tomorrow be? BY: KERRY DWYER “WHERE TO WITH SHEEP?” IS AN ongoing conversation I have with my sheep-farming clients. How do they adapt to the changing marketplace? Or do they drop sheep out of their systems? First, think about why sheep are farmed at all? They were domesticated from wild back in the day for several reasons: 1. They could be domesticated. 2. As a herd animal they could be managed in groups. 3. They produced fibre, milk and meat; probably in that order of initial importance.
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4. They produced useful items from herbage which is not much use to us directly. Then think about why we farm sheep in New Zealand? When first imported they produced fibre which could be sold to foreign markets, because it is a non-perishable product. We do not have enough local market to consume our production, exporting is key to our economy. They can be selectively bred to fit a range of environments and produce differing balances of product. The first sheep imported to this country
were little Merinos, producing maybe 2kg of fleece from a 30kg ewe. The wool was incredibly valuable in 1850, but has declined in real terms ever since. They weren’t suited to all areas, and refrigeration of meat allowed the industry to expand and diversify production. So today we have a range of breeds fitting different environments and production aims. Maybe sheep are special to us primarily because of this historical legacy, we love sheep because we have them! But they have declined in importance over the past 30 years or so, driven largely by the continued decline in the real price of wool we have been earning.
What is special about our sheep today? They are radically different to the sheep of 1840, and quite different to the sheep of 1990. As the figures in Table 1 show, the
Country-Wide
October 2021
