Duncan and Jess Barber have continued to expand to ensure their future
GET bigger or get out has been the philosophy behind Duncan and Jess Barber’s Merino sheep operation.
GET bigger or get out has been the philosophy behind Duncan and Jess Barber’s Merino sheep operation.
Operating across four properties, with the home base, Coliban Park, at Metcalfe south of Bendigo, down to Birregurra, the Barbers run traditional Saxon Merino sheep.
The original Saxon flock has been on Coliban Park since 1859 and it has continued through four generations of the Barber family — Duncan’s great grandparents purchased the property in 1915 and the sheep came with the property.
And while Duncan said a lot of people ask him why he hasn’t changed, his response is always the same: “They’ve been here longer than we have and they are obviously doing something right”.
“They’ve done a fantastic job for us,” he said.
Duncan has been on the farm since he was 16 — 31 years ago — and he and Jess took over the management in 2005.
And in that time they have doubled production.
“It was get bigger or get out,” Duncan said.
“Back when I came home I worked out my parents were paying 24 per cent interest and about a 10 per cent wool levy, so 34 per cent of their gross income was coming out — we needed to get ahead by getting bigger.”
To get bigger they leased land for a decent period of time.
“Our theory was to lease land over a period of time, then we should have enough surplus sheep to sell and buy land with,” Duncan said.
“We leased 3000 acres (1214ha) at Harrow and when that lease came up we bought a property in the Western District.”
SIZE MATTERS
AFTER Duncan’s father, Anthony, died in 2005, he and Jess continued the expansion plans along the same vein — leasing 2024ha at Ravenswood for five years and then purchasing the neighbouring property once the lease was up.
“We are still expanding in the same way, we have been lucky with interest rates as that has helped to get to where we are.”
Duncan said the main reason for the expansion was because he “enjoys it”. They are also planning for the future, as the Barbers have four children and Duncan said he planned to “hand the reins over at 65 and do something else”.
The Coliban Park sheep flock has an average fibre diameter of 17 microns and an average fleece weight of 4kg to 4.5kg skirted.
Duncan said while the sheep were the traditional Saxon style, they had been breeding slightly bigger sheep to cut more wool.
“We want to keep producing more wool but we don’t want them overly big.”
The sheep are run strategically across the four properties, as the kind of country on each property is suited to a different purpose.
KEEP IT CLEAN
THE main breeding property is Coliban Park, while the two properties are for running wethers and surplus ewes for first-cross lamb production.
Duncan said the Birregura country was heavy and produced “beautiful clean wool”.
Across the four properties they each have an average annual rainfall of about 600mm, and range from basalt to granite soils with undulating hills on the main property, to lighter shale country where the wethers are run.
Producing about 5000 Merino lambs, lambing occurs at the end of April for 10 weeks, to avoid the midwinter weather, with shearing in February-March.
“We used to shear in September-October, then sell the wool at the first superfine sale of the year, so usually in about February and that was our income for the year, plus any lambs sold — we used to have a lot of lambing problems and tender wool,” Duncan said.
So to change that, they kept lambing in April, but moved shearing.
“The ewes were going in to lambing with six to seven months of wool on them so the break would be in the middle of the wool. Now shearing is in February-March we hardly have any issues with lambing or tender wool.”
The lambing percentage has also improved from 75 per cent to 90-95 per cent.
Duncan said they bred all of their own rams, and joined naturally.
The ewe lambs are classed as 1½-year-olds, with about 30 per cent culled and put into the first-cross ewe program, while the ewes retained are kept as breeders until they are about seven.
Duncan said as they had been expanding they were often joining 1½-year-old ewes, but if they could give them “another year” they matured better and were bigger in the long-term.
In addition to the Merinos, the Barbers run about 1500 1½-year-old first-cross ewes.
The wethers are moved to another property and grown out until they are two years old and then sold direct to abattoirs.
Duncan said there was some improved pastures, but the sheep were grazed on mostly natives made up of mainly kangaroo grass.
“We don’t usually need to feed over winter, we usually get March-April rain and if we have to we don’t start feeding until January-February.”
CLASS ACT
THE Barbers are part of the Vitale Barberis Canonico Wool Excellence Club and as part of that are accredited under the SustainaWOOL Integrity Scheme managed by New England Wool.
The scheme promotes ethical, environmental and high-quality wool production, with VBC Wool Excellence Club members benefiting from purchase contracts at premiums to the physical wool market. It also encourages them to continue to produce the Saxon-style wool product.
“The financial incentives are huge and the six-month contracts are good, especially because the market has been fluctuating lately,” he said.
Duncan classes all of the sheep and wool himself, as he prefers to know what is happening in his wool and flock.
Tensile strength, above 40 Newtons per kilotex, was important in the VBC club and something they normally didn’t have a problem with because of when shearing now was. “We shore 160 bales this past shearing and of that just five were tender, all the rest were sound, whereas traditionally we would have had more tender than sound.
“Years ago anything sound was above 30N/kt, now it is above 40N/kt.”
Duncan said they got good strength in the ewe lambs, and often their wool was above 50N/kt.
The Barbers do all of their own work and employ contractors for shearing, which helps to keep costs down.
“In 2005, the first wool clip Jess and I sold we got $5/kg and our cost of production was $7/kg, but every year since then the wool price has gone up and we have been able to keep the cost of production down.”
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