Transcript of AE 1366 - The Goss: Aussie Farmer is Breeding Super Sheep

G'day, you mob! Pete here and this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news, whether locally Down Under here in Australia or non locally overseas in other parts of the world, okay. And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right. If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss.

So these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English. So it is particularly good to improve your listening skills.

In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the Academy membership at AussieEnglish.com.au, where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time. Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time. Keep practising and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been sitting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode, guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

How's it going, Dad?

Pete.

So, um. Sheep. Do you like sheep, dad?

Oh, yeah. Well, yeah...

I love a good sheep.

He was dumb as a brick, but, yeah, they're okay.

They're pretty dumb. Um, the farmer works to create cross-bred sheep, to cut down labour and increase profit. So statistics show that the number of farmers in Australia has dropped by 22% since 2006.

Sheep farmers?

Yeah. That, uh, yes. Number of sheep farmers.

And are they, these meat sheep? Presumably not all..

I assume so. Some producers have been developing sheep that are easier to care for by eliminating the need for shearing and mulesing. Yeah. Do you want to explain what mule...

Yeah. Well, firstly, obviously it's meat sheep because you wouldn't want to eliminate the need for shearing if you got wool sheep because you've got to get the wool off somehow. Well there are sheep that shed, but those are typically not, you know, high quality wool. So mulesing is where, because the way sheep have ended up being bred as a sort of accidentally. We've got a whole lot of wrinkles around their backside.

Yeah.

And, um, where the wool grows around it, and then obviously they're pooing and getting caught up in those wrinkles and they get fly blown. So flies. Blow flies will come and, um, lay their eggs. They'll bite the skin, make it bleed, and then lay their eggs in there. And then the maggots hatch out and start to eat the the animal's backside.

It's like you're just glad it happens to sheep and not..

Horrible infections. Um, and so mulesing is cutting off all those extra bits of skin, um, to, to stop that happening.

So, yeah, producers are working to breed low maintenance sheep as farmers and workers continue to walk away from the agricultural sector. Wattamondara farmer Leo Tomkins said finding shearers and labourers was getting harder, even in sheep country in central New South Wales. And so he's been developing his own super breed. Um, and then it's like, quote, what we're trying to do is create a sheep that's a low input sheep or a low maintenance sheep that is going to be as productive or more productive and more profitable than other competing breeds at the moment. Um, what we're finding is that many shedding breeds, uh, because they are in their infancy in the industry. They haven't really achieved those production goals to compete with other wool sheep at the moment.

So they are talking about shedding sheep.

Mhm.

And yeah, there's certainly there's been a lot of work done on, um, fleeces that will automatically fall off.

Yeah.

Effectively at the end of the year. And, and some farmers I know have, have worked with, uh, putting coats on the sheep to keep the wool clean.

So this is sort of like with lamb horses and that when they get cold, they you sometimes see them with those rugs over the back of them.

Uh, keeps the wool clean. So it needs a lot less processing, so it makes it cheaper to deal with. And it's high quality wool because the fibre isn't damaged. Um, but also they end up with, um, at the end of a growth cycle. Uh, there's a weak point in the, in the fibre, and it just breaks and falls off.

Clever.

So they shedding it rather than having to go and cut it off. Shearing it. So.

Is that normally what happens with dogs and cats that shed in summer, or is it falling off at the skin level, like the cells die or something in the hair follicle and the hairs fall out?

I'm not sure about that. I mean, we've got a dog at the moment. It's, Labradors shed twice a year. They get a winter coat and a summer coat. Don't ask me why. In the beginning of winter, our dog is shedding! So.

Well he's like, I'm going to make space for that good quality fur.

But yeah, Labradors in particular have that double coat. They have the fluffy undercoat, and then the guard has top coat, and it's the fluffy undercoat that they want to get rid of.

Yeah, because that's keeping all the heat in.

And then grow a new one in winter.

Yes. Okay. But it is interesting that there. It is one of these industries where I imagine that farming in Australia is getting less and less. Would you say fresh people coming through?

Yes.

Wanting to start their own farms. And there's probably multiple reasons. And part of it would be just the price of land. You know, it's sort of, it's one thing if you already own it or the family owns it to keep farming on it, but if you wanted to buy it and start from scratch, you would. It's just infeasible, right? Like, you just wouldn't be able to make enough money to ever pay off the loan. Um, and so it is funny that they're turning to things like changing the genetics of the livestock that they're using to make it more affordable, because I imagine if you, if you end up with all of these sheep, you don't have to shear, you're going to save thousands and thousands of dollars every single year from having to hire shearers to come in and do insane manual labour.

Yes.

And all this effort of like, you know, rounding the sheep up and and all those other problems, like, I think you were saying, being fly blown and, and everything like that, right?

Yeah. No, it's hard work. You know, animal farming. Because even sheep, you need to be constantly looking out for infections.

Mhm.

Um, depending on what country they're in...

Was it you telling me that they're way more high maintenance than like cattle?

Oh yeah.

And other...

Yeah. It wasn't me. But yeah.

Because we were chatting about this, we were away on the weekend and grandpa was there and he's, we have a farm, or we have a farm. He has a farm. He and his, his wife Nana, they have a farm in Bendigo where they have sheep on the farm. They used to farm the sheep as a hobby. And he, you were, I think you, everyone was talking about the different processes that you had to, you know, you had to cut their toenails. You had to, what was it? You had to, I can't remember the wording for it. You had to get rid of the, the wool around their groins once a year so that it didn't get fly blown. Crutching them, was it called?

Crutching is..

Crutching.

Crutching is, or mulesing, is where you're cutting the skin off. And then every year they you still got a crutch. You've got to take the, or twice a year..

Sheared.

You're basically shearing, or hand shearing, or mostly it's just taking the, um, the wall off around their backside so it doesn't get, you know, fly blown.

Yeah. And then you have to, what you have to, like, treat them for different diseases and vaccinate them effectively. Worm them. Yeah. It was interesting just thinking about all those things. And then also just like I was chatting to grandpa because I was interviewing him, or interviewing him, ask him about his, um, photo album that he was getting for his 95th birthday and all the different photos in there, and we were talking about the farm and the different stages. He'd sort of gone through with it, because I think he was saying his uncle's had a farm in Queensland, in the Durry, ah the Durry, the darling..

Darling. The Darling Downs.

Darling Downs- like, I keep thinking, Murray-Darling, Darling Basin.

Yeah..

Well the darling..

The top of the Murray Darling Basin.

And they had farm. What were they. They had different crops and.

Yeah.

He was saying wheat, barley, fallow, in terms of leaving the fields with nothing. And then, um, sheep or something, they rotate through those. Through those. And so he got he caught the bug, um, when he was a young boy and then wanted his own. And, um, what I think you were telling me they tried cattle.

They had cattle when they first bought it, but the cattle are just too hard to manage.

Yeah, and..

Funnily enough, they're not. They're not as intensive as sheep, but they're much bigger animals. And the land is just not suitable. The land is. It's got areas with steep and it's rocky and things and sheep are fine on that country.

Yeah, well that was it, I think, right. It was drier too, and I didn't realise that part of the reason he had chosen merino sheep that produced good wool for that area was because it was dry. And so when you go to, when you..

Need bad conditions for to grow fine wool.

Yeah..

If you put that, if you read about it, if you put merino sheep on, in, on the tropics land, well firstly they'd all die of disease because they'd just get too wet.

Mhm.

But yeah you put them on good feed all year.

Yeah.

They, they, the fibre, the fur, the fur, the hair, the wool, fibre, um is thicker. Because it's growing better. Um, you want to.

Growing..

You want to starve them, do something just fine..

You're not starving them, but you're trying to. You're trying to put them on, uh, low quality food effectively. Yeah.

Wow.

So putting them in that, you know, borderline dry country.

These sheep are just thinking every time you shop, Cunts! Like, like like, goddammit, guys, when do I get the good food?

Yeah.

You like starving us so that you get some nice wool. That's worth a lot more than we'll go to, um, Italy or whatever it was.

It's mostly Italy and England to..

Yeah.

To make, make men's suits out of.

Really, men's suits?

Mostly.

So is, what goes into woollen jumpers and everything? Is that coarser grade?

It's much coarser and then even coarser again is things for carpet and stuff. But.

Yeah.

We don't grow a lot of that wool in Australia. Mostly our wool is mostly superfine merino, which goes off to the European fine clothing trade.

I got to tell you the funniest story I think grandpa was telling me was that there was a grade of wool. So wool can be separated into different grades, right. From superfine all the way down to coarse. And then I think he was saying dead wool.

Yeah. But even but the, the breed of sheep itself is the superfine.

Yeah.

Um, and so there's fleece wool which is just coming off, but you go everything down to dead wool, which is...

Where the animal is dead..

Get cut off a dead sheep.

And he was saying, I think that there was a story about the the town Redesdale nearby, that it had a Greek man that had migrated there and was living there, and he would just go around collecting dead wool.

Yeah. His, his job was to get people to ring him up and say, come and shear my dead sheep that I found in a paddock.

I think grandpa was saying there was something questionable about the guy.

Whether he was actually..

A sheep in a lot of..

Finding, in inverted. I'm doing air quotes here. "Dead sheep". Yeah.

It just seems to have two air holes on the side of the sheep from them..

Side of bullets. High velocity lead poisoning.

Yeah, exactly. And you just sort of like. Yeah, I can see the incentives would have been there. But grandpa was saying that he potentially got septicaemia from, um, one time taking the dead wool off a sheep, or a few sheep that had died on his property, and using his right arm to push it into a..

Into a bale.

Into a bale, and scratching his arm. And it potentially, the dead part..

Obviously got septicaemia. And it was a couple of weeks after that.

So yeah, it's crazy, right? Would you ever farm an animal? And if you, if you had to farm one, what would you choose?

Oh probably goat.

Goats.

Yeah.

Why goats?

Because the, goats are cute. They're smart. They're pain in the ass. Like, they..

They're so noisy!

But they also, they break through fences and things, so they're higher maintenance. But they're cute. They're intelligent.

Yeah. You get those goats that, um, that have that genetic disorder where they, they freeze and straighten their limbs out and fall over.

Yeah, fall over.

So that you can just walk out and be like, [Pete claps his hands]

Bang! Come pick them up.

Thunderclap! Bang! And they all just collapse. Have you seen those videos and them doing that? Yeah. When they get startled? When they're startled, responses to fact and straighten out all their limbs?

Yes, I know. They'd just fall over.

But goats also seem like they're, they're like the intelligent version of sheep. And they have, like, a fucked up sense of humour. You see the young ones where they, um, there's videos out there of them, like playing with each other, and there'll be one little goat that's like jumping on top of all the other goats and animals and, like, kicking them over and doing backflips and stuff and just loving life.

Yeah.

And they also eat everything, don't they?

They do. They eat, you know, almost everything.

But it was interesting. They'd taken the sheep off the farm, my grandparents farm recently because they it had been so dry there, right.

Yeah.

We had a few of these trees.

Run out of food. Yeah.

A few of these big trees that had, one of them had been planted by Nana and Grandpa when they built the place.

Yeah, 50 years ago.

And it just died.

Yeah.

And, um, I think when we were walking around, the interesting thing to see was the bark being stripped off the trees. And I wonder if that's the sign that the..

And the kangaroos.

Yeah. I wonder, though, if that's the sign that the, um.

They're running out of food.

Yeah. And then they decided to take them off the farm.

Um, well, the the because the sheep on the, on your grandparents farm were being adjusted. They weren't theirs.

It was. I want to explain what that is.

Well, it's another farmer just pays them to have his sheep on their property and feed.

Yeah.

But, um, because they were running out of grass on the property, it's 56 hectares, so it's a fair amount of land. But they were running out of, um, of feed, and, um, the farmer was having to bring bales of hay in and as well as every other farmer around because every other farm was having the same problem. And so hay was getting very expensive. And the end, he just decided it's costing me more to keep these sheep alive than they're actually worth.

Yeah.

So.

So he had to take him off and probably..

Sent him off to the market. Yeah.

All right, well, that's probably enough, but yeah, it's interesting seeing them use these, um, methods of of breeding in order to try and make more..

Well, you know, biotechnology is going to, uh, hopefully improve a whole lot of things.

I just need to make a sheep that can shear itself. You just walk up to it and press a button.

Well..

It's fleece just falls off in one beautiful.

Yeah.

Like, outfit, you know. Anyway, thanks for joining us, guys. And we'll see you next time.

Bye!