New entrant Green Range Lamb takes out overall win at WAMMCO Producer of the Year Awards

Cheynes Beach lamb producers Ash Baldwin and Col Bowey, who own the Green Range Lamb brand, took out the overall prize at WA Meat Marketing Co-operative’s Producer of the Year awards, recognised as Australia’s largest lamb competition. The Innovative producer group Green Range Lamb is based on the South Coast, east of the Albany townsite. WAMMCO’s prestigious list of winners from five categories were announced directly after its annual general meeting held at the Katanning Regional Saleyards on October 26. Green Range Lamb’s farming business partners, who take pride in producing the best quality lamb, were first time entrants in the WAMMCO competition, after setting up their innovative lamb production enterprise at their 900-hectare property in 2020. Their consignment of 5765 lambs, a 50-50 mixture of pure UltraWhites and crosssbreds, delivered to WAMMCO from January to July averaged 22.08kg dressed weight and scored the highest point total tally of 91.16 out of 100. Mr Bowey, a systems based agronomist, said the win validated the direction of Green Range Lamb, a product that is marketed in Perth supermarkets and found on Rockpool Bar and Grill’s restaurant menu. The lambs produced in Green Range are also registered with WAMMCO’s Farm Assured Program that provides premium grass-fed and pasture-raised lamb into North America. “No doubt about it, the climate and our grass-fed and feed finishing system is delivering a very unique lamb product,” Mr Bowey said. “We run our sheep on irrigated improved perianal pastures and finish lambs from 30 to 60 days on a legume-based pellet from Kojonup Feeds that we designed in conjunction with TPC Ag director Mark Emonson.” He said Green Range’s nucleus ewes were selected with an infusion of HillCroft Farms UltraWhite genetics to breed eating quality structure into a 5000 commercial ewe flock that produces two lambs per head per year. “We will be increasing to 8000 ewes by 2024,” Mr Bowey said. “As we put more fences in, we can get better rotation and refine our system — it’s mind boggling to think of what our farm can carry by improving our pastures and grazing management.” He said there was some learning curve challenges building a business from scratch and producing top-notch lambs 12 months of the year. “We can now look at lamb very differently — it can challange optimum cuts with very minimal waste as opposed to other red meat types,” Mr Bowey said. “We haven’t even slightly achieved what we can do for lamb and the consumer will be the big winner.” WAMMCO supply and development manager Rob Davidson said the competiton, now in its sixth year, was designed to reward elite growers. “Up to date, the competition has handed out $145,000 in cash, prizes and donated products,” he said. “Its pleasing to see five suppliers in this year’s competition that have consistently placed in the top 10, with their dedication to genetics, preparation of livestock and working with their agents to deliver an absolute quality product to us.” Mr Davidson said the competition had a minumum turn-off requirement of 250 lambs — either Merino or crossbred with automatic entry to all WAMMCO suppliers. “During the 2021-22 financial year, we evaluated 707,440 lambs, representing 95 per cent of the throughput at the Katanning plant, an increase in 6000 on the previous year,” he said. “We are seeing more lambs (72.9 per cent) hit that 18 to 28kg liveweight target with fat scores between two and three and defect score of three. “Our top winners are delivering beautiful lines of well-muscled lambs with even carcases throughout the year.”