Head Shepherd

This week on the Head Shepherd podcast, Mark catches up with long-time friend, Andrew Kennedy. Mark and Andrew worked together back in 2001 at the start of the Lifetime Ewe Management project, and have kept in touch ever since. Andrew completed a PhD at the University of Western Australia and has an undergraduate degree in agriculture from the University of Melbourne. Andrews career and experience...

This week Mark chats with Daniel Wheeler, sheep scanner and sheep fanatic. Daniel has scanned over 6.5 million sheep in his time as a scanner, a career path Daniel was never intending on taking. After getting off at the wrong tube stop on his OE in London, Daniel decided to take up a position of sheep scanning assistant up in Scotland. The rest is history. Scanning so many sheep across the world h...

On the Head Shepherd podcast this week, we have Ross Paterson of Waikaka Genetics, Southland NZ. Ross is fifth generation at Waikaka Station. The family farm 200 Hereford Stud cows and run 4,000 ewes which includes a Texel, Romney, Romtex and Romdale studs. The Patersons are well known for their Hereford stud, and breeding a functional cow that their buyers want is priority. Ross highlights it&apo...

This week on the podcast, Mark Ferguson chats with Gundy (David) Anderson and Angus Fraser, of Bog Roy Station.  Gundy and Lisa Anderson are fourth generation owners of Bog Roy station, farming just under 3,000 Ha with 4,000 merino ewes and 140 Hereford cows on the shores of Lake Benmore, Omarama, New Zealand. Gundy and Angus go through the past, present and future of Bog Roy. When they arrived in...

This week Mark Ferguson chats with Emeritus Professor Graeme Martin about the role of the brain in sheep reproduction and how teasing works.  Graeme has had a long and distinguished career in sheep reproduction. He was raised on a sheep and cereal farm in Western Australia. After studying at university, Graeme went on to complete a PhD in the area of sheep reproduction. He then worked in France an...

This week Mark catches up with Kate Broadbent, president of Coopworth Genetics and is stud farming in the Waikato, NZ. Kate spent 20 years chasing sheep filled summers around the world, and finally settled in New Zealand 12 years ago. At this point she purchased Nikau Coopworth sheep stud, and has been passionate about the breed ever since. Facial Eczema is a serious concern in the North Island of...

This week we change tracks a little and catch up with Dr Richard Shephard of Herd Health, a specialist animal health company which Richard founded in 1998 to address multi-disciplinary problems of animal and human health and animal production. Richards started as a clinical dairy veterinarian, who then went on to do post-grad training in epidemiology, whilst also working as a  farm management cons...

This week we have the fantastic Shane McManaway. Shane is Chair of PPP, Chair of the Wiararapa Development Group, among many other things. From spraying ragwort with a knapsack as a teen around the Wairarapa, to 17 years as CEO of Allflex in the Asia/Pacific region, Shane shares his story of how he got to lead some of Australasia's biggest operations. Mark and Shane discuss the evolution of d...

Welcome back to Season 5 of the Head Shepherd podcast. We have a fantastic season lined up for you, and we're starting with a bang! Sarah Nolet is an internationally recognised food systems innovation expert, the CEO and Founder of AgThentic , a global food and agriculture strategy firm, and co-founder of Tenacious Ventures , Australia’s first dedicated agrifood tech VC firm AND podcast host...

Welcome back to the 50th episode of Head Shepherd! This week we hosted a live Q&A where Mark answered your questions. This is a recording of that live stream. Mark answers questions about the polled gene and the variations that exist there, about breeding for lamb growth without ending up with excess adult weight and more. Thank you to everyone who has listened so far, we have thoroughly enjoy...

This week Mark chats with Dr Leo Cummins of Byaduk North, Aus. With the world favouring environmental efficiency, why is it that we don't breed cattle to have twins? Mark and Leo go through the ins and outs of Beef Twinners, a composite from Nebraska that Leo has been working with for the past 17 years. During Leos research career, he investigated high fecundity beef and sheep livestock syste...

Black Box Co is the brain child of Shannon Speight and Emma Black who both have backgrounds in the beef industry and have both won the Zanda McDonald award. After seeing how little data was utilised at all levels in the industry, Shannon was inspired to find a way to capture and standardise the data that potentially existed all along the value chain. She met Emmathrough the Zanda McDonald award, E...

Mark chats with Richard Scholefield of Whangara Farms, Gisborne NZ on this weeks Head Shepherd podcast. Whangara Farms comprises of 7 farms, making up 9,500 Ha overall. Across the seven farms, there are 20 staff to manage the 37,000 breeding ewes (all of which are EID tagged), 10,000 replacement hoggets and 3,500 breeding cows. They regularly scan over 200% and mark over 50,000 lambs a year, an ev...

This week Mark catches up with long-time friend, Dawson Bradford. Dawson started off in pigs, and bought some sheep to 'keep himself entertained' whilst he waited around to feed twice a day. What started off as a hobby, led to Dawson becoming one of Australia's most successful performance breeders. The Hillcroft Farms name can be found in many high performance Poll Dorset and White...

Wallaloo Park is a family-owned and managed business located south of Marnoo in the Wimmera district of Victoria. The business operates a 3500ha mixed enterprise farming system, including cropping and livestock enterprises. Wallaloo Park merino stud was founded in 1978, currently running 2500 ewes.  Utilizing the latest technology to enhance genetic gain, through both ASBV’s and stringent visual c...

We are delighted to have had the chance to catch up with Laura Ryan. Laura is the founder and global Chair of Meat Business Women which launched in 2015. With a first-class Honours in Marketing and a Masters in Management, Laura joined the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) in 2007. Successfully launching premium beef & lamb brands within a large butchery business in the Nor...

Richard Loe, a former All Blacks player with a passion for livestock joined us this week on the Head Shepherd Podcast. Loe's family farm, Glenloe is based near Oxford in Canterbury in the centre of the South Island of New Zealand.  Richard is farming Dohne Merino Sheep and Santa Gertrudis Cattle. Richard is a co-host of Magic Radio's Rural Exchange program which airs every Saturday and S...

Sophie and Lucy, who grew up at Middlehurst Station for the past 20 years, have had the absolute privilege of bringing Middlehurst Delivered to life. Bringing a premium product that you can enjoy at home, knowing exactly where it came from. Middlehurst Delivered aims to have consistency with their meat and to always give that "great experience". It doesn't stop there, Middlehurst is...

The Luhrs family farm near Cavendish in Western Victoria.  Ricky and his wife Marni farm with Russell, Ricky's dad.  They have two speeds, flat out and asleep.  They are always thinking about extracting the next few percent out of the business through strategic management, pasture performance and genetics.   If what they need doesn't exist on the market they build it.  I'm sure you&...

This week on the Head Shepherd podcast Mark speaks with Brendon Savage from Western Australia. Brendon has a great insight on soils and pasture after spending the past few years improving his pastures via various, slightly different methods with the goal of producing the same, with less. Brendon also upped his sheep numbers to take his business to 50:50 crop to sheep which isn't common in the...

Welcome back to the Head Shepherd podcast. This week we have Todd Burger from the Western Districts of Victoria. Todd farms his merino sheep a little differently. After being frustrated with the lack of maternal behavior in his ewes, he decided to do something different. Todd intensively manages around 700 of his 7,000 ewes around lambing time. This means shedding up at night, temporary shelters a...

Welcome back to Season 4 of the Head Shepherd podcast! We'd like to say thank you for all of your support in the past and we cannot wait to share this season's guests with you. This week, we start things off with a bang. Mark chats with Bill Malcolm who has been a professor at Melbourne University since 1980. Mark actually grew up close to Bill in the Mallee, and Bill also taught Mark ec...

For our final episode of Season 3, we are excited to discuss Genesmith,  a startup within neXtgen Agri. Mark catches up with Ian Harris, Electronics and Data Science Manager at neXtgen Agri who, along side Ali Alqassab and Jack Zarifeh, are developing facial recognition cameras to apply the power of machine learning to the livestock industry.  We are starting with matching lambs and ewes, in the p...

This week on the Head Shepherd podcast, we decided to offer the mic over to you to answer your questions. We put a call out on various social media platforms and we had a great response. We had lots of questions ranging from wool vs shedding sheep, to the use of AI and Face Recognition in farming. It is always great to hear Marks opinion on these things and as ever, it's a podcast to get you...

Mark first came across Moojepin Merinos, a Merino stud near Badgebup in the Great Southern Region of Western Australia, fifteen years ago whilst looking for some high growth merinos. This week, Mark discusses what's going on at Moojepin with Hamish Thompson, stud co-principal and third generation on the farm. After Hamish's father David Thompson, was told joining merino ewe lambs was imp...