The health of every animal matters - farmer Lynley Anderson min read
Lynley Anderson may have been born into farming, but she still feels it's a privilege to have responsibility for the land on her property at Kojunup in WA.
There's a lot of talk about sustainability, but for Lynley being sustainable means more maintaining and she aims to be better than sustainable.
"We try to improve the land and improve how we manage it. Not only for production purposes, but also to make it a healthier landscape" says Lynley
In the past they have had to be reactive to droughts and floods and salinity and uncontrollable weather events. Changing to a proactive role with changes to the management systems and farm set up has resulted in those events have much less of an impact than they used to.
We do it because it is the right thing to do
The humble merino of old was bred to have lots of folds (or wrinkles) in their skin. This wrinkle puts the sheep at higher risk of flystrike though, as moisture gets trapped in the folds which then attracts flies who lay their eggs in the skin folds. The fly larvae then start devouring the skin.
It is for this reason that Lynley breeds plain (with low/no wrinkle) bodied sheep. Not only has this resulted in a flock that is easy care and highly resistant to worms, they have also been able to stop the practise of mulesing as a flystrike prevention method.
For Lynley and all at Anderson Rams stopping mulesing was quite simply the right thing to do.
