Graham Family

For the Grahams, sustainability isn’t a buzzword it’s the family business plan. First settled in the district in about 1886, the operation now spans four generations at work, with a fifth coming through and grandchildren making six. “A multi-generational farm like ours probably describes what sustainability is,” they say. “Each generation needs to find an area to improve on the previous one. Our generation, it’s going to be the sheep game — and with Mumblebone genetics, I think that’s going to allow us to leave this operation sustainable for generations to come. That’s the ultimate goal, really.”

The Grahams run Merinos alongside Angus cows, split roughly fifty-fifty between sheep and cattle, and it was the cattle side that shaped their thinking on genetics. “We’d looked into the Mumblebone Merinos for a couple of years before we made the change. We were chasing similar traits to the cattle carcase traits and growth rates that are positively correlated to the reproduction of the animal, which is live lambs. We’re joining our heifers at a young age, and we thought, well, there’s data, and there are blokes out there doing it with ewe lambs why can’t we do it? That’s a big focus of why we went to Mumblebone. With all the genetics behind them, we can minimise the risk of breeding the sheep we want to breed.”

The priorities are clear. “Fertility is number one. The second one is do-ability. They’re the two key ones in relation to sheep.”

For the head of the family, now 66, it’s meant unlearning a lifetime of instinct. “I love looking at good wool. I’ve had to adjust my eye, because I came up in the heavy-wrinkled era grow as much wool as you can, that was the definition of a good sheep. So at 66 years of age this is very much a learning curve for me, in relation to what the Mumblebones are going to bring this operation. And after two years, we’re already starting to see some positive things with our wool broker. That’s good — that’s where we’re going.”

The next generation is watching the ewes prove the theory. “I think it’s driven by condition score. The plainer, free-bodied type of sheep seem a lot more able to maintain a higher condition score as it gets tough, whereas traditional Merinos lose that condition quicker. That’s a big reason why these sheep are going to deliver us more lambs on the ground. A live calf and a live lamb pays the bills — and if we can throw a bit of growth rate and a few carcase traits in on top of that, we’re kicking goals.”

The plan from here is aggressive. Within two years, the Grahams aim to have around 10,000 ewes joined to Merinos — and given the lamb survival they’re seeing, they may push further still, running fewer terminals on the strength of the increased lambing percentages. “A Merino was traditionally for wool, whereas with the new-age Merino you can get both — the wool and the meat. For us as a family, it’s a no-brainer really.”

“I’m delighted with the way the sheep enterprise is going,” the family patriarch says. “As we know with genetics, building flocks or herds takes time — it takes generations. But four or five years down the track it’ll be paying dividends big time, because all of a sudden you’re going to end up with an extra 20 lambs on the ground per hundred ewes joined. That’s where we want to be.