SheepLinks Program

The project vision is to:

• increase the profitability of the sheep industry across the whole supply chain, enhancing opportunities for the creation of regional jobs and industry growth.
• enhance financial resilience and social acceptance of the sheep industry, enabling it to deal with emerging challenges including variable seasons, changing markets and environmental impacts.

A framework to guide project development has been developed and covers the themes of livestock management, business risk and consistency of supply chains and value chains.

The first phase of the program commenced in 2021 and is expected to run for five years. The initial projects are now being implemented and include:

FEED365

FEED365 is a farming systems project developed to re-design livestock forage systems for grazing all-year round in Mediterranean environments with minimal supplementary feeding. It will focus on sheep grazing systems in southern WA that are challenged by climate change with increasingly hotter, drier and more variable seasons.

For more information, visit the SheepLinks - FEED365 webpage.

FutureSheep

The FutureSheep project will assess the impact of projected climates in 2030 and 2050 on the economic performance of modelled representative farms in the key sheep producing regions of Western Australia.  The project seeks to identify possible adaptation strategies (feedbase, animal genetics and management, farm systems, enterprise mix) that are viable, environmentally sustainable and target future market opportunities.  It will also evaluate how farm turn-off (numbers, location, age and weights) could change in response to future farming systems and therefore affect supply to feed-lotters and processors. The project complements existing work (the NEXUS project) in the Eastern States.

For more information, visit the SheepLinks - FutureSheep webpage.

Objective Carcase Measurement Feedback

Objective Carcase Measurement (OCM) Feedback is a four-year (2022- 2025) project under the SheepLinks program, to assist WA producers with understanding carcase feedback, improving carcase quality, and hitting market specifications. The project involves 40 farm businesses undergoing the Meat the Market PGS, where they will receive OCM feedback on their own carcases, be equipped with on-farm skills and management tools that improve LMY, EQ, and non-compliance to market specification, and prepare them for the release of price grids and signals relating to LMY and EQ. It will also evaluate the benefits of OCM feedback and its adoption to on-farm productivity, efficiency and profitability, and will analyse the increase in profits from price signals relating to LMY and EQ. 

For more information, visit the Objective Carcase Measurement Feedback webpage. 

Further information