MERINO producers in southern Australia opting not to mules their lambs could face an annual bill of about $3 a head.
The cost was flagged by John Webb Ware, who told a Mackinnon Project seminar in Melbourne last week, that woolgrowers running non-mulesed sheep in a typical high-rainfall southern farm system, with 8100 dry sheep equivalents, should prepare themselves for a bill of around $19,840 a year.
Dr Webb Ware, a senior consultant for the Mackinnon Project, said the costs incurred by extra jetting, and crutching and possibly higher shearing costs, and reduction in wool value, had the capacity to decrease business return from $6.03/ dry sheep equivalent in the model flock with mulesing, to $3.58/DSE without mulesing a drop of 41 per cent.
"There will be a substantial drop in business return," Dr Webb Ware said.
"How realistic this will be will vary enormously. It will be less in lower rainfall areas, especially where dags are not a problem, and strongly influenced by management, the local environment and genetics of the flock."
The figures are estimates based on management costs.
Dr Webb Ware said his estimates allowed for a wide cost margin.
Visiting wool producer Bruce McMullen, Meredith, Victoria, agreed with the method of calculating the costings.
"It's a hell of a cost impost," he said.
But Mr McMullen said their full impact could only be appreciated when an average rainfall season occurred and his supplementary feed costs were honed down.
Dr Webb Ware said woolgrowers should look at their time of shearing, time and frequency of crutching during the transition to managing unmulesed sheep, and adjust their jetting, worm control and supervision of lamb hogget flocks to control fly strike.
He said that in a Western Australian study, unmulesed sheep took 10pc longer to shear.
"If shearing and crutching take a lot longer to complete, the cost will potentially increase, though it is too early to estimate if and what the extra cost will be," he said.
On a positive note, Dr Webb Ware said it was likely that lambs would be heavier at weaning, which would improve lamb survival.
"The period of no fly risk post- shearing or crutching is likely to be reduced from over six weeks to as little as three weeks," he said. In terms of jetting, Dr Webb Ware said it was highly likely that at least one, and possibly two breech jets would be required to reduce fly strike in an unmulesed flock, depending on the shearing time.
"Clik and Cromazine have been fantastic products to control fly strike, but in the future, in terms of chemical residue and fly strike protection, we will have to wait and see," he said.
Dr Webb Ware said that, although supervision was critical it was not realistic for large-scale producers who run 10,000 DSE/labour unit to have time to check sheep at risk daily.
"Instead preventative measures must be adopted," he said.
Based on the new cost of 70 cents a sheep for clips from Leader Products, plus application costs management of non-mulesed clipped sheep was calculated at $1.25-$2/sheep.
This is mid-way between non-mulesed and mulesed flocks.
More information is being collected from a variety of sources including an Australian Wool Innovation funded trial being run by the Mackinnon Project.
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