Head Shepherd

Growing up in Western Sydney with no connection to agriculture, Samantha Wan’s path into the wool industry was anything but typical. In this week's episode, Sam talks with Ferg about finding agriculture through high school ag, building confidence without a family farming background, and the role mentors and community played in shaping her career.  She and Mark discuss her work across the wool...

How can commercial producers use breeding values without recording full pedigrees? This week, Mark chats with Carel Teseling, Chief Operating Officer at Angus Australia, to find out.  Carel's career has taken him from South Africa's regional performance recording programs to 14 years of developing genetic tools for Angus Australia, a decade leading Australian Wagyu Association's gen...

Ferg shares his thoughts on genetic gain in the sheep and beef industries. He has often said that we should be seeking to achieve a minimum of 2% genetic gain, but the top operators we deal with here at neXtgen Agri are consistently achieving 3-4%. Ferg explains how they’ve achieved that with the use of selection accuracy and the compounding effect of disciplined breeding decisions over time. Ferg...

What if measuring worm resistance didn't require high parasite burdens and ALSO delivered double the heritability of egg counts? Sarah Preston, Lecturer at Federation University and cofounder of Swabtec, explains the development of their saliva-based test designed to measure immune responses to gastrointestinal worms in sheep, allowing resistance to be assessed without relying on high worm eg...

What limits ewe productivity in current sheep systems? Our guest this week, Tara Dwyer, is the breeding manager at Headwaters Genetics and a farm manager within the Lone Star Farms group. Her work covers stud breeding, commercial supply chains, and large-scale sheep systems. And, in amongst all of that, she has found time to do a Kellogg report, 'A New Fleece on Life: How the Sheep Farming Se...

Gus Rose shares the recent results from the 'Genetics of foot health in Merinos' project, which is looking at footrot and foot structure in sheep in Australia. Gus shares what the data shows on the heritability of foot shape and its relationship with footrot, as well as other foot structure traits.  Gus Rose explains how the dataset is being built, which traits are proving to be correlat...

On this week's episode, Tim Gole shares how sheep farmers can increase their profits by shifting from responding to problems to preventing them in the first place. Tim runs ForFlocksSake , a vet-based sheep consultancy company. After a lightbulb moment during the drought, Tim became a self-confessed sheep fanatic. With both Tim and Mark clearly in their element, they spend nearly an hour talk...

What do the genetics of tail length and the genetics of semen quality have in common? Not much, except that our guest, Marnie Hodge, Sheep Genetics Senior Development Officer, has researched them both. Tail length is moderately to highly heritable, but in her research, Marnie found that measuring tail length in centimetres versus a scored system gives you far more accuracy and picks up significant...

How simple rotations and tight feed management lift whole farm performance. Mark chats with Bevan Ravenhill, WA General Manager for Lawson Angus  WA, to talk about what really drives a productive grazing business. Bevan grew up on a dairy farm, and that early training in grass, rotation, and pressure has shaped the way he now runs sheep and beef across a mixed enterprise. Bevan explains how a simp...

Ever wondered what it takes to build a succesfull seedstock buisness from the ground up? Well, this is the podcast for you.  This week, Mark chats with Jasmine and Hayden Green, owners of Summit Livestock, about how they built their Angus and Limousin seedstock business from the ground up (and the challenges they faced), the importance of crossbreeding for production, how they balance phenotype wi...

Accounting may not be every farmer’s favourite topic, but it is one of the most powerful tools on the farm. This week’s Head Shepherd guest, David Egerton-Warburton, explains why. Raised on a sixth-generation farm in Kojonup, Western Australia, David learned early that every on-farm decision ties back to sound business practice. His father, Kent, founded Agrimaster in 1981, bringing farm records i...

What makes farmers change? And what holds them back? Our guest this week, Dr Ruth Nettle, has spent 25 years studying just that. Ruth has spent her career looking into how people in agriculture learn, adapt, and lead. Now leading the Rural Innovation Research Group at the University of Melbourne, Ruth has seen how agricultural extension, advisory networks, and rural communities have evolved throug...

Want to know more about meat-eating quality traits like IMF, shear force and marbling? Our guest this week, Dr Peter McGilchrist, is a leading meat scientist and professor at the University of New England, Australia, likely has the answers you're looking for.  Peter and Mark talk all things meat-eating quality and how the red meat industry can move beyond commodity pricing by identifying prem...

Ever wished you could get breeding values on your commercial Merinos without having to record weights, dates or pedigrees? This week, we’re launching neXtPredict, our brand new genomic tool that lets you go straight from DNA to breeding values with just a simple TSU sample. Developed in partnership with Weatherbys Scientific, neXtPredict provides base genomic breeding values, parentage, poll/horn...

What do you get when three sheep consultants, all podcast hosts, from Australia, England and Wales sit down in front of a microphone? You get a very entertaining, slightly chaotic, sheepy podcast! This week, we're joined by Liz Genever and Nerys Wright to discuss the launch of OptiEwe UK as well as the challenges and opportunities faced by farmers over there.  Liz, Nerys and Ferg chat about t...

Is drench resistance an issue on your property? Thanks to modern technology, we have tools at our disposal to help. This week's guest is Ryan Luckman, vet and founder of DAGI, (Drench and Grazing Integration), an app that displays the risk of larval challenge/resistance risk for the paddocks on your farm, helping you make better grazing decisions.  With the help of industry experts and the su...

Thousands of you listen to the podcast every week, but we've come to realise many of you don't know exactly what we do here at neXtgen Agri.  In this episode, Mark, our host and CEO, takes to the mic and chats about all things neXtgen Agri and the services we provide to farmers across the globe. He shares how “farming in our hearts, science in our heads” drives everything we do. From hel...

Our guest this week is Vicky Alexandrou, co-founder of Woven Optics . Over the past eight years, Vicky has helped design and build a handheld microscope that lets you measure wool fibre diameter right there in the yards or shed.  Instead of waiting for lab results, you clip a small sample, take a few quick images along the staple, and within seconds, the device tells you the mean micron, standard...

What does leadership look like in agriculture today? For Felicity Taylor, Area Manager for Rabobank in Moree and a 2025 Zanda McDonald Award finalist, it’s about connection, community and supporting others to succeed. In this episode, Felicity shares her journey from growing up on a cropping property to becoming the youngest area manager in Rabobank’s history. She talks about the rising costs faci...

What does it take to keep a sheep business moving forward? For our guest this week, Hamish Thomson of Moojepin Merinos, it’s a mix of genetics, management and never being afraid to try something new. In the podcast, Hamish talks about the progress they’ve made since we spoke to him last, which was four years ago!  They have been continuing to select for traits like growth, muscle and fat, as well...

Ever considered using a drone on your farm? Well, this is the podcast for you. This week, our guest is Luke Chaplain, founder of SkyKelpie. Luke is one of the leading experts in drone mustering in Australia and has spent the last three years researching drone technology to find the best fits for Agricultural use.  More recently, Luke has gotten involved in the training of drone usage, to give farm...

If you want to know about sheep genetics in New Zealand, our guest this week, John McEwan, is the person to ask. John has been involved with genomics “since before genomics was a thing.” From discovering key reproductive genes and rolling out DNA parentage, to the sequencing of the sheep genome and the industry adoption of genomic selection, John takes us through the milestones that have shaped Ne...

When you think of a 'modern merino', what comes to mind? For our guest this week, Willera Merino stud principal, Simon Coutts, it means a sheep that works for your business, regardless of the weather or market conditions.  Simon explains Willara's breeding philosophy, which focuses on developing a 'modern merino' that is multi-dimensional and provides multiple income strea...

Simon Saunders is one of the original farmers behind Headwaters and runs the elite ewe flock at his farm, Stag Valley. In this episode, he discusses how the breeding program has evolved, what it takes to deliver consistency at scale, and the future of the Lumina lamb programme. If you're wondering how to extract more value from your sheep operation or thinking about speciality lamb production...

This week, we’re chatting about the differences between US and NZ sheep production systems with Dr. Whit Stewart, an Associate Professor and Extension Sheep Specialist in the Department of Animal Science at the University of Wyoming. Whit has spent the last year on a sabbatical in New Zealand, learning and absorbing as much as he can about sheep farming here. Because of this, he has some great ins...