Editorial

2024 has seen a return to more favourable seasonal & selling conditions compared to 2023.
“Because we’d had such a great run with fantastic prices since 2019 last year’s reset was the biggest ever price correction the industry has endured.
Producers were basically shell shocked, particularly combined with a run of difficult management years & an increase in interest rates.
Hopefully we are on the way up from here on in. Most areas in NSW excepting the Southwest have seen well above average rainfall.
It will make for a fantastic spring.
However, the talk of a Super El Nino was also another factor driving confidence down which played havoc with our store sales last year.
Early 2024 has seen some changes to our farming business. We made the decision to sell Waverley & Bruie (our 2 properties in the Bruie Plains area) & return to a more simplified management system.
This was done mainly due to fact that finding off farm labour has become more & more difficult.
Our breeding ewe base will now be topped up as it was prior to us acquiring more land, this will be done by using Mat & Korina Aveyard’s West Plevna Flock as essentially an extension of our own Commercial flock. Each year a small portion of hogget ewes will be exchanged to keep a broader genetic base.
This was our Original system.
This year we will be conducting another AI program to compliment our stud breeding program.
Besides the improved season we have fortunately seen the recovery in a lot of the ground lost in our meat markets.
It has been an interesting exercise to look at the roller-coaster we have been on over the last 4 or 5 years!
Factors that have caused this ride are varied but I reckon worth a look at.
The worst year of the 3 year drought, fantastic livestock & wool prices then Covid (which has had many spin on effects such as labour shortages) also abnormally low wool prices due to Covid restrictions & shipping issues, substantial rise in Variable Costs (Wool harvesting particularly), higher interest rates, banning of the live export market in WA.
No surprises that there has been quite an exit from the wool growing industry, from an AWI survey it’s around wool harvesting & the price of wool why most producers leave wool.
At the same time comparisons were done between a Beef Cattle enterprise, Wool, Dual-purpose sheep & a prime lamb enterprise.
Without to much detail the results were interesting. Wool didn’t ever top the list, it also didn’t end up on the bottom but 4 out of 5 years it came 2nd.
During the drought beef was the worst performer but came out on top last year, Dual purpose was the leader in 20/21 with wool second. The real take away is the stability of wool & particularly in dry times.
Within each enterprise the greatest gap in $per DSE up to $30 was between the top & bottom performers. When the top 20% were studied the gap narrowed to a $7.30 average between the 4 enterprises studied.
The real message is “There is more to be gained by getting better at what you do then generally changing enterprises.”
To the future:
These are my thoughts, we are definitely heading to a reduced supply of wool, hopefully fewer sheep & access again to international travel (mainly the Kiwis) will help remedy the shearer shed staff shortage. I think it has definitely improved from a few years ago. The overall future for our enterprise looks extremely bright particularly if we focus on the sustainable/natural aspects of the fibre. The synthetic industry particularly is being shown up for the Environmental damage it is linked to it
DATES TO SAVE
12th Annual Ram Sale Wednesday the 2nd of October
Inspection & Field Day Friday the 20th of September.
Contact Stud Principal Boyd Aveyard 0428 921 087 or Jake Lebrocque 0429 571 643