There's a move in the sheep industry to go "nude", which doesn't mean taking your clothes off — it means switching to sheep that shed their wool and do not require shearing.
That was the hot topic at a sheep event in western Victoria this week, when more than 100 farmers got together to discuss the pros and cons of nudie sheep.
Nudies are becoming increasingly popular in a world when shearers are rarer and more expensive than ever.
Once a dyed-in-the-wool merino man
Russell Mitchell, who farms at Glenthompson in Victoria's Western District, was once a diehard wool producer, but now he's making the switch to nudies.
"We were merino producers for years and years and we really loved everything about it but we started to lose faith in the production and profitability and future of it," he said.
The process to breed nudie sheep from their existing flock has taken a few years, but it's been faster than Mr Russell expected.
"We went through our composite flock and just picked out sheep with bare bellies, bare points, less wool around the face – that was our foundation flock," he said.
"We put our nudie rams over those, and we continued to breed from the progeny.
"We've now got ourselves a flock that's heading toward complete shedding and not requiring shearing, and we were surprised what a quick turnaround it was to breed the wool off them."
Shearing more expensive than ever
It might seem counterintuitive to breed a sheep that doesn't have wool, given wool has value, but Mr Mitchell said that value was limited and didn't cover costs.
"The composite wool is not a major factor in our gross margin, with the decline in the composite wool price," he said.
"In the future, with the scarcity of shearers and shed hands, I can only see it being a positive and I think the nudie enterprise will outweigh the wooled enterprise and we don't need all that infrastructure of shearing sheds."
Before becoming a fine wool grower, Mr Mitchell ran shearing teams around the country and acknowledged it felt strange to now be breeding nudies.
"I can't believe that after all these years, this is where we are," he said.
"But we've made the change, we made the change with our heads, not our hearts, and we know we're in a better financial position and we're really happy with the future direction of the industry."
