In fact, there’s hardly a thing on his 4200ha mixed sheep, beef and cropping farm at Harrow, in Victoria’s Western District, that hasn’t been measured, monitored or scrutinised.

With impressive ease and accuracy, he can rattle off a raft of figures, from the amount of wool he produces per hectare, to the cost of fodder per dry sheep equivalent, to sowing rates comparative to crop yields. In the same breath, the 41-year-old offers up wool tensile strengths, joining percentages and chemical usage rates — not to gloat, but rather to show how such information can be used to assist the most important number of all: the one on a farmer’s bottom line.

Michael, his wife, Jane, and their sons, Lachie, 13, and Campbell, 12, manage Tuloona Pastoral on behalf of Michael’s city-based family, which has owned it since 1985.

Originally hailing from Adelaide, and having studied economics at university, Michael worked in the wool processing industry before moving to Tuloona 15 years ago. In that time he has added land and increased stocking rates by 40 per cent to 40,000 dry sheep equivalents (or 13.5DSE/ha), made up of 12,000 Merino ewes — half of which are joined to terminal rams — and 600 breeding cows, run alongside a 1295ha cropping enterprise. Sheep account for about half the business. Fine wool production makes up 30 per cent and first-cross lamb production 20 per cent. Beef and crops each account for 25 per cent.

BEST WESTERN

LOCATED in 575mm rainfall country on the western side of the Grampians, the property is made up of a variety of clay loam soils with some gravel banks. Pastures include perennial grasses phalaris and cocksfoot, and leura and trikkala subclovers.

Michael, a director of the Sheepmeat Council of Australia who also sits on the Victorian Farmers Federation livestock committee, said the farm employed two fulltime workers, and one casual, with contract labour used for sowing and harvesting, hay and fodder production, lamb marking and fencing and conservation work.

On the sheep front, he said there had been a move away in recent years from being mostly focused on wool characteristics to a greater emphasis on meat production and growth rates.

He said this was not a kneejerk reaction to wool prices, but a conscious decision based on issues around vegetable matter and staple strength.

Nowadays the Tuloona ewes produce about $98 of meat value and $35 of wool.

Michael also focuses on fertility and lamb survival, bare breech and poll and maintaining micron while boosting fleece weights.

AUTUMN BREAK

MERINOS are joined from mid-March for five weeks at a rate of about 1.76-1.8 rams to 100 ewes.

The Craigs breed about 100-200 rams a year for their own use with semen sourced from leading sires from the Australian Merino Sire Evaluation.

Although the flock is based on Merryville and, more recently, Rockbank bloodlines, genetics have been introduced from the more performance-orientated Centre Plus, Leachim, Lachlan, Ridegway, Bundilla, Anderson and Stockman studs.

Michael said ewes were classed into joining group types based on micron, skin type and breech type. Ewes can be retained until they are nine or 10 years if they are healthy, profitable and sound mouthed.

Michael said sheep were managed to specific liveweight and condition-score goals using Lifetime Wool principles. Ewes are ultrasounded, all sheep are vaccinated, ewes older than eight years are run separately and everything is monitored for worm-egg count levels.

Sheep are supplementary fed with silage and grain as needed. There is 1000 tonnes of grain and 3500 tonnes of silage on standby to cater for seasonal fodder variability. The cost of the fodder reserves works out at about $10/DSE.

Containment zones have been built to hold three quarters of the sheep and are used in autumn when ground cover falls below 80 per cent. The Craigs operate on a mantra of 100 per cent ground cover, 100 per cent of the time.

BALE OUT

EWES lamb for five weeks from mid-August, with those carrying singles lambed down in mobs of 300-400 and twins 150.

“We don’t look at conception rates anymore, the only figure I look at is the number of lambs weaned on ewes joined,” he said.

“It is our Achilles heel … we’re getting 89 per cent on total ewes joined. It’s something we need to improve. But eight years ago, we were only getting 78 per cent, so we are getting there.”

After lamb marking in October, the ewes and lambs run in mobs of 1000 and following weaning in December 3000-4000. The average livestock paddock is about 40ha.

Michael operates on a culling rate of about 15 per cent. Any ewe that fails to rear a Merino lamb is joined to a terminal sire. Any ewe that fails to rear a terminal lamb is sold.

Ewes are shorn in February and March, with the aim of minimising midpoint breaks close to the break in the season. Wethers follow in August and rams and crossbred lambs in November.

The flock produces about 64,000kg of 17.2-17.5 micron wool with a tensile strength of about 35 newtons per kilotex. This works out at about 4.9kg per Merino ewe, or 4.2kg for a terminal, totalling 52kg/ha. Michael hopes to increase that to more than 55kg/ha.

Michael adheres to low-stress stockhandling techniques, minimising use of dogs.

All sheep are tested using an in-shed laserscan at two years of age. The information is plugged into a database which is used for classing and culling purposes.

Tuloona has been a host site for Australian Wool Innovation’s Merino Lifetime Productivity Trial, which involves looking at the lifetime productivity effect parentage has on offspring, since 2015. As part of the trial, 48 sires have been artificially inseminated to more than 4000 ewes which are DNA tracked, with all production variables, including that of their progeny, recorded over seven years.

GAME OF TAG

FOR Michael, one of the biggest changes to his farming program occurred in 2006, when the Tuloona Pastoral board, made up of members of his family — “city people” — requested he cease mulesing.

“They said ‘you’ve got to stop … it’s bloody disgusting’,” Michael said. “It’s interesting, as a city boy that came down as a little kid at five or six, one of my first memories is mulesing. As a kid you go ‘what the hell?’. In the back of my head, I get why we had to stop.”

During a year transition, Michael conducted a trial where half the lambs were mulesed and half weren’t. About 4000 lambs were weighed at weaning and the unmulesed lambs were an average 3kg heavier. “It cost us about $12 a head to put that extra 3kg on an animal,” he said.

This revelation led the Craigs to then breed for sheep with low breech that didn’t require mulesing. Every ewe was scored, but Michael said given there was “five different levels of wrinkle, five different levels of bareness” it required too many different coloured tags. Instead, they chose to attach an electronic ID ear tag to each ewe and record its breech score into a software system.

All lambs now receive a Sherwell high radiofrequency tag (costing about 80c) at marking, with details about their weights and mother uploaded to a software system.

“Anytime we do stock work, we weigh and condition-score our animals (and upload all the information to the software system),” he said. “Everyone else says ‘it’s a lot of work’ but it gets to a point where it decreases your labour because we can now auto-draft, and set clear parameters.”

BORN TO BE WORN

MICHAEL estimates that sheep EID cost him about $4000 in initial infrastructure and has helped boost the business’ productivity by 15 per cent through improved genetic selection and monitoring.

“We think for every $1 of EID investment we have generated $8-$10 additional return,” said Michael, who recently completed a Nuffield scholarship looking at the sheep industry’s ability to create value.

He said the system had benefits from three perspectives: “the here and now” — the day to day monitoring; the answering questions — “it allows you to conduct a range of trials really easily” — and long-term genetic evaluation.

The Tuloona ewe flock is run in large mobs according to their weights, with the lighter mob joined to terminal sires.

“With electronic ID, you see some animals go into the light mob, back into the heavy, back into the light and they stay in the light mob,” he said.

“If we didn’t have a recording system we couldn’t work that out.”

The Craigs’ crossbred lamb flock comprises 4300 ewes joined to White Suffolk rams to produce a 20-22kg carcass weight trade lambs over the hooks.

“Without EID I couldn’t work out if I’m doing a good job classing sheep,” he said.

“I reckon one of the problems with the industry is ego, that someone says they can class a good sheep.

“Well, hell, I don’t know if I can but give me a way to test it.”