Latest news with #Edenhope
ABC News
3 days ago
- Health
- ABC News
Victorian sheep farmer makes breakthrough in bid to breed footrot-resistant sheep
A Victorian merino stud has bred its first line of footrot-resistant rams in a major step forward against a disease that costs the sheep industry more than $80 million a year. The Kealy family in Edenhope has been working towards the goal for years but biosecurity restrictions and the lack of a breeding value for footrot in Australia have been stumbling blocks. Australian sheep breeding values are a prediction of an animal's genetic merit for particular traits such as growth, eating quality, wool production, reproduction, and health. Stud co-principal Elise Kealy said it was an exciting step. "We have bred a line of rams which we are confident will have good footrot resistance, which will be a bit of a first for the industry," she said. Footrot is a contagious disease that attacks the tissue between the horn and the flesh of a sheep's hoof, causing lameness and other problems. "They lose weight, they don't lactate properly, their reproduction isn't as good, their wool production goes down," Ms Kealy said. New Zealand has had a breeding value for footrot since 2020, but Australia does not have one yet. "That means farmers in New Zealand can measure it, record it and select for it," Ms Kealy said. "We can't do that and we also can't buy New Zealand semen or rams and bring them back here, for biosecurity reasons." The breakthrough came when Ms Kealy happened upon a ram that had excellent natural resistance. "There was a ram born and bred in Australian seven years ago and it had semen collected before it went to New Zealand," she said. "Since then it's had four different age groups of progeny measured for footrot resistance and it's now sitting in the top 10 per cent of the industry for resistance. "We were lucky enough to get some of that semen two years ago, and now we have one-and-a-half-year-old rams coming on with what we think will be very good footrot resistance." Footrot expert Mark Ferguson helped develop the breeding value in New Zealand and is working on doing the same in Australia. "We're closer than we've been before," he said. "We've done a lot of work in New Zealand that's now being translated to Australia." Footrot is more prevalent in places with persistently wet conditions such as New Zealand. "The breeding value been just so powerful for those people in high rainfall areas who are challenged with foot health — places that have had footrot for literally 100 years," he said. A footrot vaccine available in both New Zealand and Australia but Dr Ferguson says it is not a panacea. "They've been a great management tool, but they're not a silver bullet," he said. "But by actually shifting the population to a more resistant status, those management tools become more effective because you've got less disease around. "So all of these things need to go together to give farmers a great combination of things they can use to keep feet health up to the standard they'd love to."
ABC News
06-06-2025
- Climate
- ABC News
Victorian drought devastates farmers, businesses and communities
The effects of drought creep insidiously into every corner of the Edenhope community. It is like many towns throughout southern Australia suffering greatly at the whim of the weather. Farmers, local businesses and sports clubs — none are immune to a prolonged dry as bad as any can recall. Parched paddocks and dry dams mean farmers are spending tens of thousands of dollars buying feed, carting water and sinking bores, or selling off livestock they can not afford to feed. The money bucket is not bottomless, and for some, the bottom is already being scraped. In a town like Edenhope, almost entirely reliant on surrounding farmers to inject money into the local economy, that means everyone suffers. Paul McDonald farms at Charam, not far from Edenhope. He recalled a time in recent, but fading memory, when it was so wet he could not get around his paddocks. "November, December 2023 you couldn't drive in the paddocks, so I ended up buying a new motorbike to get around," he said. "Well, that motorbike is still sitting in the shed with seven kilometres on the clock, unused because of the dry spell we've had since. He has measured just 50 millimetres of rain for the first five months of this year. The long-term average annual rainfall for his region is about 550mm. Paddock feed is non-existent and his grain reserves are gone. "I've started buying in grain from the next-door neighbour; I had 70 tonnes of grain on hand, but anyway, that's just how the dice rolls I suppose," he said. Mr McDonald said the effect on the town was obvious as farmers tightened their belts. "A lot of times you'd battle to get a car park out the front of the pub or the department store, but now you can just pull up anywhere," he said. "The activity's just not there at the moment. "You're down to the bare necessities." Nick Brahmbhatt, who has owned the local take-away shop for three years, moved to the town during more prosperous times. "When we started here, the lake was full and a lot of people were coming into town and bringing economic activity," he said. He said his income was down by about 20 per cent. "When there's no [rain], the farmers are going to hold back spending," he said. "They're struggling … and everybody just keeps looking at the sky and hoping for rain to come around." But despite the challenges, he said there was no other place he would rather be. Mental health is at the forefront during the drought. The Edenhope-Apsley Football Netball Club, where Liz Kealy is president, provides farmers a critical escape from the drudgery of drought. "Years like these people need the club more than ever — if they don't have that reason to go out, they won't," she said. "For my family, being active and being fit is, first and foremost, getting out and getting those endorphins pumping, being on the field or on the court. Ms Kealy said the conversation about mental health was much more open than during past droughts. "My father is a farmer and talks about the '06 drought and the ones before that and there was not as much support as there is now," she said. Like many in small towns, Ms Kealy wears several hats. She is also an accountant, working with farmers through the financial impacts of drought. She said some of her farming clients were spending $40,000 a week on bought-in feed. Some in the area, she said, would be forced to sell land to keep farming. Grampians Health rural outreach worker Murray McInnes works across a region with an elevated suicide rate. There has been a big increase in people referred to him for help, particularly from the farming community. "It is heavy because people are finding it difficult to leave their farms — they're isolating themselves because they're busy feeding and doing what they need to do and they're not taking time out," he said. Mr McInnes said a break in the drought would not fix everything, but it would certainly help. "It's like coming out of winter, the rain will immensely make people in this area a lot happier," he said. On another farm near Edenhope, Clayton Caldow and his brother Ashley were flat out feeding sheep when ABC Rural stopped by. "It's pretty bad, real bad," Mr Caldow said. He is no stranger to tough times — he lost his dad to suicide in 1984, when Clayton was only 17. "We never saw it coming … and it's still happening," he said. Grief struck his family again in 2016, when his wife Sophie died from breast cancer at 42. "The kids were 3, 7, 12 and 14, but I wasn't just going to sell out … we soldiered on and the support from my family and the town was phenomenal," he said. He has continued to soldier on, raising his children while battling drought. "The youngest one, Poppy, is 11, she's my little gate opener, she asks a lot of questions and she knows how tough it is," he said. He did not know what the future held for the next generation, and said farming was a tough sell in a drought. "You get times this tough — why would you want to do it," he said.
