My ethos has always been to produce more from less and guide farmers on how they can use their existing resources to make sustainable change across multiple points of the lambing season, both on my own farm and in the programs I am involved in.

My life's work culminated in the launch of Lambs Alive in 2019.  Lambs Alive is a training program to help lift production rates and yield more profit and better welfare for the animals and you.  It brings together a large group of like-minded farmers who are keen to impact their lot in life by producing more from less.

Lambs Alive draws from my extensive work in the industry such as Lifetime Ewe Management (LTEM) for which I was the lead author. LTEM coaches producers to understand and evaluate the impact of ewe nutrition on ewe and progeny performance. The program has now been delivered to over 4,000 farmers (representing 30% of the national flock) by myself and over 50 educators who I directly trained. Participants increased their number of lambs weaned by 8%, improving the whole-farm stocking rate by 10% and reducing ewe mortality by 30%.

Another program that you may associate me with is Bred Well Feed Well. It’s a one-day workshop for sheep producers that I co-developed which deliverers best practice breeding and feeding messages. As the primary deliverer of the program, it has now reached 4,500 producers that are breeding and managing their animals so that they are fit for farm and fit for market. Evaluation shows that participants who have increased marking rates solely due to BWFW have done so by 9%.

Having grown up on farm all my life, initially at Flowerdale Farm in Kinglake, then at the foothills of the Grampians between Dunkeld/Glenthompson, then onto Newlands at Apsley and finally the expansive plains of Casterton/Strathdownie, I have a life-long experience in the sheep and beef industries.

Along with my wife Penny and her parents, I now manage a significant livestock enterprise near Glenrowan in north east Victoria, with 3000 ewes and 250 cows.  This self-replacing high productivity operation provides me with a great practical background and a constant reality check with the challenges that all producers are facing on a day to day basis.  A key focus for the last 10 years or more has been to improve lamb survival, with our flock now achieving 90% survival rates of foetuses scanned.