Radio Transcript

Welcome to Agritalk Radio

This week we are going to be talking about mulesing.

The time many people tail, mark and mules their lambs is nearly here.  The hot topic around the cradle will be how will we cope when we need to stop mulesing in 2011.

It’s a very serious question.

We believe the answer will be different for everyone but most people will find a practical way to cope. People with plain-bodied sheep, in the drier areas, with good nutritional management, may find un-mulesed sheep are no big problem. 

Others may find an extra crutch, or jetting, may be needed. Others will need to take more drastic action including selecting for bare-breech rams, using the clips or the intra-dermal injections. 

Some may even take the most drastic step of going out of sheep.

However, there is a lot of positive activity to help woolgrowers adapt without causing more pain to the sheep via deaths through fly strike or unreasonable expense to farmers. 

Australian Wool Innovation is doing research into alternatives to mulesing and there is a web page on their website titled ‘the road to 2010’ with lots of good information.

A lot is also happening at the local level, around Australia.  At Minnipa Agricultural Centre Mark Klante, the farm manager, plans to run some demonstration trials.  The current sheep at Minnipa have been scored for bare area. We found about 16 percent of the ewes have score three bare-breech.  This means they have some bare area right down the legs.  One was a score two and one even a score one - which is a real “bare-bum”.

The Centre has also purchased a line of weaners that are known to carry bare-breech genetics and will attempt to buy some “bare-bum” rams. No sheep will be mulesed at the Centre after this year.  Turretfield Research Centre and all Research Centres in WA will not mules any sheep from now on.

This work will also help woolgrowers adapt their management to “life after mulesing”.

For further information on this story or any edition of Agritalk, please visit www.ruralsolutions.sa.gov.au, click on news, then radio.  You will find a transcript of the program along with lots of handy links to the things discussed.

Information kindly supplied by Brian Ashton