A letter by Graham Coddington regarding Shedding Sheep

To the Sheep Producer,

After dedicating my whole life to the stud and commercial Merino and wool industries, I am constantly asked what drove me to firstly even consider and then to make the move into, shedding sheep.

While the decision was certainly not easy, the two key factors in my thinking were pretty straight forward ECONOMICS and LIFESTYLE.

For quite a few years now, we have seen the turmoil, that surrounds the wool industry and I personally cannot see this changing. Issues around returns, shearing costs, animal health and welfare, labour and input costs combined with the buoyant projections for sheep meat made me seriously look at the long term, sustainability of what I was doing and shedding sheep seemed to tick all the boxes.

I was aware of all the various shedding breeds in Australia and set about trialling them under commercial conditions to allow me to make an informed and hopefully, profitable decision. What I initially found was actually quite disheartening-many of the so-called shedding breeds actually carried a fair bit of wool (in some cases even requiring shearing and definitely lending themselves to external parasite problems); had significant structural problems, particularly through the front legs and feet; were no where near as fertile as I had been led to believe; had containment and temperament issues and in many cases were just plain small.

Happily, I now believe that I have found the answer to all my concerns and would like to offer an open invitation to all interested livestock producers, to visit Susan and I at “Gilgai” 400 Westella Road, Geurie NSW 2818, Tuesday 7 March at 2pm to see for yourself at our Field Day, showcasing these SheepMaster breed.

SheepMaster is a clean shedding, robust, correct maternal breed of sheep that I believe will fundamentally change the Australian Sheep (and cattle) industries. Key performance criteria for the SheepMaster include:

• Ewes getting in lamb at seven to eight months of age and then rearing a lamb(s) every eight months.
• Full shedding due to silky skin type (no shearing, crutching, fly, or lice)
• Highly fertile with strong maternal traits
• Conformation and constitution
• Animal Welfare benefits of no tailing or mulesing
• SheepMaster ewes running under commercial conditions can go close to weaning their own body weight per annum (I include this as my cattle breeding operation comes no where near this)
• Are adaptable to all climatic conditions in Australia and internationally

Both Susan and I look forward to seeing you, showing you our sheep and answering any questions that you may have about our SheepMasters.

Regards,

Graham Coddington