Making More from Sheep website maintenance management agreement

Summary

The Making More from Sheep website maintenance management agreement is a joint initiative of Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) and Australian Wool Innovation (AWI), to ensure the management and hosting of the Making More from Sheep website.

The agreement ensured that the making more from sheep website remains a fundamental resource of information and the go to place to deliver productivity, profitability and sustainability of sheep businesses.

The consolidated information stored on the website has been a valuable source to other delivery programs throughout the sheep industry to build the knowledge and skills of producers and advisors to deliver improvements in management and productivity.

Objectives

The main objective of this project was to:

• host and provide management of the MMFS website
• provide 6 monthly reviews of website content (all URL links) to ensure content is kept up to date
• ad hoc repair of broken links on the MMFS website as reported
• add relevant sheep industry news and literature resources to the website, in collaboration with MLA and AWI
• provide proactive website management by networking with industry R&D leaders to identify new sheep management resources for integration / signposting from the site.

Key findings

The website remains essential source of information for sheep producers in Australia and around the world, with over 478,000 pages reviewed annually. 

Website traffic has seen a reduction in visitor numbers in the 2019/2020 period, but overall the numbers are very healthy for a website that has not received any promotion or updates to content or tools.

Even though the information supplied on the website is directed at Australian conditions, it is an amazing result to receive so much interest from overseas visitors consistently over the project period.

Benefits to industry

This project ensured that sheep industry R&D information, tools and resources remain consolidated, with the website continuing to be a fundamental underpinning resource for current delivery programs relevant to the sheep industry e.g Profitable Grazing Systems, BredWell FedWell, Its Ewe Time.

Future research

To ensure the Making More from Sheep website remains the go-to-place for all sheep related information, there needs to be a clear and agreed strategy between MLA and AWI on the future of the MMFs website content and hosting.