FINDING ways to stay profitable and sustainable in extreme seasons is a daily reality for livestock farmers.
It's a grind certainly not lost on East Gippsland sheep producers John and Leanne White, of Lindenow South, who've battled severe drought conditions in the past few years.
Like others, they've reduced sheep numbers and tested new management strategies - such as cropping for extra feed - along with trying to improve pastures.
Another tool over the past three years has been the introduction of bio-clipping on their Merino lambs.
But after another failed season, that management strategy too is in doubt for this year.
If the seasons went their way, the Whites would use the bio-clip technique without question. "If we could do the whole flock this way we would," John said.
Bio-clipping involves placing nets on the lambs and giving them a protein-type injection to break the wool fibre.
When the nets are removed after about six weeks, the wool peels off easily. The Whites are one of a handful of farmers in Gippsland to use bio-clipping and say the benefits are plentiful. John said it reduced stress in stock and subsequently increased doing ability and production for the following year.
The wool was also more uniform in length so there was more first-grade wool and less poor-quality lines.
"It has also removed a lot of the wool faults like fleece rot and dermatitis common in young sheep," John said. "There are also great benefits the following year when we go to class sheep for breeding because all the wool is a uniform length.
The Whites have been farming their 1450ha property for 35 years and can normally run at least 10,000 sheep but numbers are back by 30 per cent this year and are set to be reduced even further if it doesn't rain soon.
The couple also run Charolais-cross vealers, although some of these are on agistment in South Gippsland.
In tough winters Merino lambs can be hard to shear, but that problem is eliminated with the bio-clip technique.
The Whites put the nets on in mid-June. Lambs are ready to defleece when the main shearing is finished.
Nets are available only for lambs at the moment, not adult sheep.
The lambs are run into a sheep handler. Two people are needed to put the net on and give an injection - a process that can be completed in less than a minute per sheep.
"Once they have the nets on it's important they go into a paddock that will sustain them and where they can be left alone," John said.
"We check them regularly because some lambs ... don't like the net, but there aren't many, maybe 1 per cent."
Accredited contractors were used for the first year, but John has since completed a short course so he can do it himself.
"Once netted the lambs walk out like nothing has happened - no stress, no foot soreness and no nicks," John said.
"Whereas if a young lamb has been through a torrid shearing, it can impact on performance."
Bio-clipping is comparable to shearing time-wise, he said.
"It takes the shearers 2 1/2-3 minutes to shear a sheep; it takes less than a minute to put a bio-clip net on and 30 seconds to take it off," John said.
There was also the cost of $5-$7 a head for bio-clipping, but John said the benefits outweighed the costs.
"They say we do get a premium price because it is listed as bio-clip, but we can't say if we do or not because you would have to have two clips side by side from the same sheep to prove it and we've never done that," Leanne said.
The downside to bio-clipping is that seasonal conditions need to be relatively good in order to do it as the lambs require quality feed to grow quality fleeces.
"Last year the season turned bad and it didn't work as well because it took longer than normal for the fleece to grow," John said.
"The sheep need to be a certain size and they need to be fit and healthy."
Normally the lambs will grow between 5-10mm of wool in six weeks.
But during a good season, the bio-clipped lambs "come off the board and sail" compared to those shorn mechanically.
The Whites concede there are pitfalls.
Firstly, seasonal conditions need to be favourable and the belly pieces can become lightly cotted, although this does not appear to have been a problem in processing as it has not attracted a discount price.
"The better the sheep do and the sooner you can remove the nets, the less likely this problem is to occur," John said.
"It's also important to put the correct-sized nets on because if they are too big the wool will sag but if the net is too tight it might finish up cutting into the sheep as it walks."
John said bio-clipping was not suitable for everyone and emphasised it was not just a matter of walking in and grabbing the necessary items off the shelf.
"You either need a contractor to do it or have done the accreditation course yourself and you also need the correct handling gear in order to put the nets on," John said.
John believes the system has a good future.
"People who are interested need to make the decision on an economic basis, like anything else, but I also make the decision on a sheep performance basis because at that age it definitely puts them in advance of machine-shorn sheep," he said.
