Van Rooy a winner

His travels and study encouraged him to think outside the square and broaden his horizons beyond Western Australia's wheatbelt. It also enabled him to see a different way of doing things on the farm.

With this new global perspective to better manage drought and a renewed passion for farming, Cameron started to increase the viability of his farm. He invested in new livestock fodder systems with a mix of forage shrubs and perennials, and switched his livestock focus to hardy African meat sheep: Damaras, Dorpers and Van Rooys.

Cameron farms 8000 hectares including owned and leased land in WA's north east wheat belt with wife Teresa and four children. His family has been on the Bundawarra farm near Morawa, for 100 years.

Merinos had always been the focus until the wool crash, falling lamb prices and drought in the late 1990s. It was then that Cameron began to seek livestock alternatives to enable him to stay on the family farm.

In 1998, he bought his first Damara rams and began to breed up a Damara flock from his base-breeding Merino flock. The move proved to be hugely successful after a few years.

"We have not looked back," Cameron said.

He said the hardy Damaras reduced costs and saved time through the elimination of crutching, shearing and mulesing. They needed lesser handling and were not susceptible to flystrike.

About 90 per cent of his stock go as live exports to the Middle East with 'very competitive' prices.

Despite issues with drought, this region is still hinged on Merinos.

"The transition to look at new alternatives has been slow," Cameron said.

"A lot of traditional farmers strongly resist these animals. They are still doing things the way they have always done."

In the dry years, Cameron was able to shift the majority of his Damaras to the north east pastoral country.

In 2008, as the drought broke, he was able to bring his core breeding flock back and keep the rest on permanent agistment.

"Most farmers had to sell off all their Merinos and must now start again from scratch," Cameron said.

Cameron and Teresa run 4000 Damara breeding ewes in the station country and keep another 1000 on-farm.

He also crops about 4800ha of mainly wheat and barley with field peas, lupins and triticale.

The next stage of Cameron's breeding program kicked into gear two years ago when he shifted focus to the bigger, meatier Van Rooy, the South African fat-tailed sheep.

"We are aiming for the animal to satisfy a dual market – domestic and export. Van Rooy has all the advantages of the Damara and a few extra ones as well," he said. Cameron said the Van Rooys were taller, wider and bigger-framed than the Damaras with a big rear, fat tail and a more placid nature. And they were pure white and pure Polls.

The main value of the Van Rooy will be in the live export market but Cameron hopes to eliminate some of the domestic buyer bias toward coloured sheep.

"Buyers can be biased to colour and turn away from some breeds, such as Damara," he said.

"For anyone wanting to manage livestock easily for a large-volume enterprise in low-rainfall country, this is the way to go."

"It has been very hard going with Merinos and wool over the past 15 years."

In 2009, Cameron bought his first Van Rooy – two ewes and one ram. Soon after, he bought another 25 ewes and three rams from Highveld Stud in New South Wales, one of the very few Van Rooy studs in Australia.

He said that as a new breed to Australia, the Van Rooy had not been manipulated by studs and breeding – as had befallen the Dorper to an extent – and were still very well-suited to the harsher country and able to adapt.

Cameron uses an artificial insemination program on-farm and this year the first of the Van Rooy ram progeny will go to work on the rest of the Damara flock.

The second AI program starts in two to three months and will include last year's lamb drop.

"So far, it has been brilliant. Everything we wanted, they are proving to be."

Once he has bred-up a base Van Rooy breeder flock, the plan is to cross some with White Dorpers to produce prime lambs for the domestic market, use Van Rooy sires to send offspring as live exports and maintain the ewe flock.

Cameron said this would spread risk and allow him to keep his options open.

He is also investing in alternative livestock feed better suited to low-rainfall, harsher country. He is trialing a plantation of thornless, prickly pear on-farm to use as a grazing fodder, particularly in drought.

The benefits are drought-tolerance, persistence and palatability but the biggest hurdle is acceptance as a mainstream fodder – the thorned version is considered a pest species over much of Australia.

"But the plant is widely used as livestock fodder in places such as the United States, Israel and Syria," Cameron said.

"After dealing with droughts for more than 10 years, we had no choice but to look outside the square in order to keep farming and stay where we were.

"In Australia, we can be quite inward looking and unaware what the rest of the world is doing, particularly the Middle East."

He wants to utilise thornless prickly pear as part of a diverse mix of native fodder plants and grasses on his marginal country.

"To maintain our livestock production, we must turn to look at low-cost sustainable grazing systems on marginal land, rather than trying to use it as expensive, unsuitable, unproductive cropping country."

Cameron has grown the cactus for 12 months and grazed a small mob of 20 sheep on it this year, assuming they would just trim down the plots. But the sheep liked the cactus so much they 'hammered' the plants in a short space of time. Cameron is now trying to grow them back.

He credits his newfound passion for farming to his Nuffield scholarship.

"It is hard to explain the importance and value of the scholarship. It completely turned my farming career around," he said.

"I went from having had enough with droughts and poor prices to still being on the farm. I am enthusiastic about farming once again."

* Full report in Stock Journal, July 7 issue.