Scoping Study for the WA High Rainfall Zone Lamb Initiative

Summary

The aim of this project was to establish the feasibility of and opportunities for increasing lamb supply from the high rainfall zone (HRZ) of WA. Market research, on-farm benchmarking and bio-economic modelling indicated that sheep enterprises were 2 to 3 times more profitable than beef enterprises, and yet 84% of producers currently run beef and more than 50% run beef only enterprises. Market research indicated that up to 600,000 additional lambs could be produced per annum from the WA HRZ through the combination of improving the reproductive performance of existing lamb enterprises and the introduction of lamb production by landholders that might consider or have considered lamb production. Significant land use and practice change will depend on addressing both perceived and real barriers to adoption of lamb production, including lack of infrastructure, concern of footrot, fleece rot, lice, worms and flystrike and that sheep require too much labour.