Allan Myers’ Dunkeld Pastoral Company passes the baa exam

Sheep Farmer of the Year finalist: Glenn White certainly knows a thing or two about transforming a livestock enterprise.

Eyes on the prize: Glenn White at Dunkeld Pastoral Company in the shadows of the Grampians. Picture: Zoe Phillips

GLENN White certainly knows a thing or two about transforming a livestock enterprise.

For the past eight years he has managed Dunkeld Pastoral Company for one of Australia’s most prominent legal eagles, barrister-to-the-stars Allan Myers, and has grown it into one of Victoria’s best-known, large-scale red meat producers.

Since coming on board in 2010, Glenn has dramatically ramped up production, animal welfare and environment stewardship on the company’s farms, which span 8300 hectares around Dunkeld in the Western District and were traditionally home to fine-wool Merinos and Hereford cattle.

Now, it is all prime lamb and Angus cattle, producing 450 tonnes of lamb, 250 tonnes of mutton, 100 tonnes of wool and 100 tonnes of beef annually.

Within the sheep flock is where Glenn has helped achieve some of the more significant gains, particularly through lambing percentages – one of the key productivity drivers of any sheep enterprise.

His work to improve the lambing environment has seen lambing lift to 132 per cent last year; a 20 per cent increase on 2017 and the best-ever result for the company.

Dunkeld Pastoral has also been an early adopter of electronic ID tags within its flock and Glenn says the benefits of the system’s data could not be overstated, adding that without it “we wouldn’t be anywhere near where we are now”.

He says one of the biggest benefits of EID is working out the optimum weight of each ewe to enable her to conceive twins – boosting productivity and ultimately profits.

The results speak for themselves.

“The way we look at it is kilograms produced per year — we have doubled it in the past eight years,” he says. “We are now running more ewes on less land, producing more meat.”

Appealing well to both judge and jury.

FINALIST GLENN WHITE

Dunkeld Pastoral Company, Dunkeld, Victoria

ON FARM: DUNKELD PASTORAL COMPANY