Mr. Michael Crosse:

I thank the Senator for his questions. In terms of New Zealand, the biggest commonality we have is that we are both heavily grass based. Milking sheep works very well on a smaller scale. The smaller land block - the 60- to 80-acre farm - can be very viable in Ireland. The cost of getting into a milking sheep set-up on a farm is heavily dependent on what has already been done. Most of these farmers may have been part time and are likely to have good infrastructure already thanks to various grant schemes over the years. If they are already doing grassland management well, the natural progression would be a change of breed to a milking sheep and then focus on proper milking facilities. That would lend itself to a very smooth transition into sheep milking. Farmers who are already doing a good job with dry stock but cannot really push it any further to make more income can very easily transition. It is different with dairy cows, for example, where cubicles are needed. On a smaller farm, there would be a high level of infrastructure costs for things like cubicles, slurry storage for dairy cows whereas the transition to sheep is gentler with a much lower capital expenditure requirement.

The Senator asked about the breed of ewe. We started off with a dairy breed that was very high yielding - the sheep equivalent of a Holstein - called the East Friesian. This ewe is a very high milker but the ram lamb is poor quality in terms of meat production. It is more difficult and more expensive to finish. We quickly recognised that having that ram lamb as a by-product would be a long-term sustainability issue so we moved to more dual-purpose type breeds. Now our breed of sheep would be the equivalent of a British Friesian. The French breed called Lacaune is the predominant one that we use and the lambs are hitting all of the specifications in the factories. The ram lamb meat is now contributing profitably to the system.

In order to ensure that the lamb is a core part of the system, the ewe rears its lamb for the first 30 days. That gives the lamb the best start and is very labour efficient in comparison with artificial lamb rearing which is very labour intensive and expensive. The ewe rears its lamb in the winter time, usually some time around the end of January, for a month. Then the lamb is finished on concentrates and the ewe goes out to harvest grass and produce milk for the rest of the year. In the conventional sheep system in Ireland, the ewe rears its lamb for 12 weeks and is idle for the rest of the year. Under our system, the ewe is rearing its lamb for 30 days and is then producing milk from grass and generating an income for the farmer on a monthly basis for the entire grazing season. The system is resilient in that regard. Our grass has a huge impact on the quality of the milk in comparison with other sheep-milk producing countries.

On buy-in, we had kept it low key with regard to recruiting farmers because we were trying to be certain about our market and that we had a route to market. In Ireland there are small cheese makers producing sheep's cheese but their ability to scale was limited. It was difficult for them to take on more farmers, so we did not really engage with too many other farmers. Now, however, the pathway is much clearer and the profitability potential in sheep milk farming has made people be more proactive in terms of looking at different ways to make an income from their farm. On a weekly basis, we are getting an awful lot of phone calls and contact from other farmers, which is great.