PROFITABILITY OF INCREASING LAMBING PERCENTAGE IN THE WESTERN-AUSTRALIAN WHEAT-BELT

The value of increasing lambing percentage in the eastern wheatbelt of Western Australia was examined using the MIDAS model of an integrated crop-livestock farm for the May lambing currently practised by most of the region's farmers. MIDAS is an optimization model, which allowed the most profitable way of managing the farm at different lambing percentages to be computed. Thus it provides an estimate of the value of higher lambing percentage corresponding to this optimum practice at higher lambing. Increasing lambing percentage was found to be profitable but not highly profitable. Benefits of the order of $1.80 per ewe per 10% increase in lambing are likely to be largely offset by the costs of treatment to achieve this increase. This finding suggests that it is not highly beneficial to conduct research to increase lambing percentage in the eastern wheatbelt unless methods with a very low cost per ewe can be devised.