LAMB SAVIOUR
Western Queensland farmers winning fight against wild dogs
FOR Rick and Jenny Keogh, the first hint something was up came about 12 years ago.
"We just noticed our lambing rates getting lower and lower," Rick said.
At the time the Keoghs’ 13,152ha Amaroo Station, about 120km south of Blackall in western Queensland, was considered prime merino sheep country, with lambing percentages within their 5000-head flock of 90, 100 and even 120 not uncommon in good years.
"We just slowly dropped down to the 50s and 60s (per cent) and we couldn’t work out what was going on," Rick said.
"We didn’t know we had wild dogs at that stage, you just don’t see them in this country," added Jenny.
"But it was dogs. And dogs with a mob of ewes with lambs are just a total disaster," Rick said.
"It’s an incremental thing, you see a dog track and you think they’re only passing through, but they are only passing through until next week when they pass through again."
In an attempt to gauge the extent of their problem, the Keoghs and six neighbours employed the services of a "dogger" who, in the first two months, caught 64 wild dogs on their properties.
This served as a sure sign to the couple that the issue was real.
After exploring their options, the Keoghs opted to spend $50,000 trialling dog-proof fencing covering 1214ha of their land. The results were almost instantaneous.
"In the first year we marked 95 per cent (of lambs) inside of that 3000 acres, and 30 per cent outside," Rick said.
"The next year — which wasn’t a great year seasonwise — we marked 85 per cent inside the fence and just five lambs outside.
"Everyone else around had been forced out of sheep into other enterprises, so we became a focus for the dogs — we were the only sheep for 100km.
“At one stage they took a quarter of our grown sheep between shearing and crutching, a six-month period."
The Keoghs, who up to that point estimated they’d lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock and potential income, said the trial proved they could get a return on an investment with fencing.
In 2015 they bit the bullet and outlaid $350,000 to proof their entire boundary.
They’ve since caught 27 dogs that were within the fence, which Rick said would have caused "annihilation" had they not acted.
"It was either fence or walk, so we fenced," Rick said.
"And we’re getting lambings again now, we’re not back to the 100 per centers but we’re getting there. We’ve still got one dog that we can’t track but we believe that we will get control of them. Ideally we’d like to split the place up inside, because it just gives you more and more control."
The Keoghs’ heartbreaking and costly journey is not an uncommon one across outback Queensland where flocks have been decimated by wild dogs.
Many say the problem has been compounded by large kangaroo populations competing with sheep for valuable paddock feed, particularly in times of drought.
Startling figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show Queensland’s sheep numbers have fallen from 10.5 million at the turn of this century to just 2.2 million today.
After years of despair, however, a silver lining has appeared on the horizon and, with more dog-proof fences going up, sheep are creeping slowly but surely back into Queensland — once revered by southern producers as a major source of surplus merino ewes to use as prime lamb mothers.
An hour to the west of Blackall, at Tambo, Andrew Martin knows the wild dog problem all too well.
As a fourth-generation wool grower and the mayor of the Blackall-Tambo shire, he has been exposed to the scourge from producer and community perspectives.
In 2012, when he moved to a 12,140ha property southwest of Tambo, he caught 117 wild dogs in his first year.
The following year it was 132.
After catching 60 by the middle of the third year he joined forces with 23 other local landholders "from here halfway to Augathella" to construct a cluster fence, which covers about 283,280ha and cost farmers about $3.76 a hectare (after a 30 per cent government subsidy).
"On this place I think we’ve destroyed about four or six dogs in the last 2½ years," Andrew said.
"The fence means lambing has gone from 7 per cent to 87 per cent."
Andrew also sits on the Remote Area Planning and Development board, consisting of representatives from the Barcaldine, Barcoo, Blackall-Tambo, Boulia, Diamantina, Longreach and
❝The fence means lambing has gone from 7% to 87%. — Andrew Mart
Winton shires, which has made use of federal and state government funds — "some of (deputy prime minister Joyce) Barnaby’s and some of (Queensland Premier Palaszczuk) Annastacia’s money" — to help build fences.
Over the past two years, the Queensland Government has dished out more than $26 million to help more than 300 farmers build cluster wild-dog fences.
It’s estimated more than 4.3 million hectares of Queensland is now protected by cluster fencing.
"(Within the RAPD area) we’ve got about 3500km of fence gone up and we’re looking at an increase of about 500,000 head of sheep," Andrew said.
"For the first time in a long time I see trucks going north with sheep on them."
Andrew said the real benefits of the fences would be realised "if ever we return to a decent season".
"Don’t forget, some people in this shire are on their sixth missed summer," Andrew said.
"This fencing thing, for every dollar we make it creates about six bucks in the community, and four of that six in the immediate area.
"We’re employing people to pick up the lambs, there’s more trucks, it’s a bit more intensive but there’s more return so we’re buying more cars and we’re buying more bikes and we’re buying fencing material.
“It’s a huge injection in the local community."
South down the Mitchell Highway, at Charleville, Campbell McPhee’s Western Meat Exporters, which processes about 3000 wild goats a year, has also turned its attention to Queensland’s improving sheep numbers and started processing mutton again.
"Just recently, with the interest in the sheep and the cluster fencing, there’s been a few people ringing to say ‘can you kill this, can you kill that?’," Campbell said.
"We thought that because no one else in Queensland is processing sheep, we’d take it on. It’s a case of educating ourselves again, getting the markets right, and getting our relationships with producers back up again too.
"We’re starting slow, getting some interest and we’ll see where it goes. We’ve done a few containers out now, into America and into the Philippines."
The sheep have come from afar afield as Muttaburra, St George and Cunnamulla "and everywhere in between".
Campbell said should producers be able to "reclaim their paddocks, to keep out the roos and the dogs", the sheep industry should "flourish again".
"Hopefully they can get the numbers back even a fraction of where they were," he said.
"The mutton markets and the wool job indicates that it should go that way, and that is usually the common denominator that makes people move."
And bite back.