Australia's natural advantage could lead to sheep dairy awakening

Mr Clark has a piggery and twin sheep studs on 1400 hectares at Inverleigh near Geelong that he plans to grow into a dairy milking 5000 sheep a day.

When it came to running profitable sheep dairies, Australia may have a 30 per cent advantage over New Zealand thanks to our grain industry and ability to milk year-round.

New Zealand's industry, Mr Clark said, grew from a 1.6pc to a 16pc share of the global sheep milk market in three years and was expected to grow 43pc in the next few years.

Murnong, Mr Clark's farming business, would forge the way to establishing a local industry.

"We could lead the world," he said.

"Yes, we can make some money but, by the same token, we're setting up a whole new industry in Australia and leaving a legacy."

That's only if Mr Clark can fight his way through red tape and some rather whimsical local government planning objections to get the ball rolling.

And one of the keys to making his venture profitable is the trigger for many of the complaints.

The Murnong proposal would house lactating ewes in huge 246x40 metre sheds that allow free access to the outdoors.

"We can control the nutrition and management of the sheep a lot more efficiently when they're shedded," Mr Clark said.

"They're not shedded all year round and they're not fully shedded either, although that's how the permit is being read.

"Fifty pc of the area is out in the sun and 50pc is undercover."

One shed was built four years ago to test the benefit of shedding and create the benchmarks for the development, which would allow each lactating ewe 3.2 square metres of space.

A long auger providing 360 millimetres of trough space per ewe - triple the standard width - delivers pellets to each mob of 350 sheep up to 10 times a day, eliminating bullying and accommodating shy feeders.

But many of the objections to the Murnong proposal concern factory farming - antibiotic resistance, the spread of Q fever, exploitation of sheep, and the use of crops for feed rather than human diets.

Other objectors more local to the site raise issues about the water supply, the noise and smell of sheep, traffic and effluent management.

Dealing with the objections - some of them clearly very professionally compiled - and the Surf Coast Shire's planning process has already taken a long time but Mr Clark is prepared to wait.

A quick resolution, though, would favour the development of critical off-farm infrastructure, a dryer for sheep and goat's milk.

Conventional dairy dryers were simply too large.

"We worked out we would run their dryer for five minutes but it takes a day to clean and a day to set it up and no one's interested in doing that," Mr Clark said.

"There's a private dryer being built in Geelong, and we will be one of the main suppliers should we get up, with very little government support.

"I'm very critical of the government.

"There's a whole opportunity here, and we don't need a grant - only a loan - but there's very little funding for start-ups."

Mr Clark dismissed the possibility of starting small.

"It needs to be the scale it's at to be economical," he said.

While the number of sheep involved may be large, milk volumes are tiny by dairy cow standards.

For the first few years, Murnong forecasts production of just 1.5 litres of milk per sheep a day with a flock of about 3000 milking ewes.

Stage two would see the flock grow to perhaps 6000 milking ewes producing three litres in seven or eight years.

It would take that long to build the right genetics using Murnong's system of single-sire matings and optimise the operation.

"We've got some Awassis, which are getting a bit long in the tooth but we've been joining them and are growing out their progeny," Mr Clark said.

"We're going to start with a Highlander base because they're good mothers and they're smaller sheep, which means they eat less and they're more productive.

"Some of those genetics aren't in Australia, that's the trouble.

"Before the borders closed, we brought in some milking East Friesian genetics and the Awassi rams.

"So that's a commercial advantage for us over anyone else in Australia."

The biggest threat to Murnong's proposal and an Australian sheep dairy industry was bureaucracy.

"New Zealand were talking about having a $2 billion business by 2050," Mr Clark said.

"There's no reason why Australia couldn't match it but the issue is we've been too slow.

"With that massive Asian population on our doorstop becoming more affluent and health conscious, the opportunities are there for us.

"There's 15-20pc year-on-year growth forecast for the next five to seven years.

"But we've lost two years already, trying to get a permit.

"I'd like to see all the right expertise, testing and authorities getting involved in creating a sustainable industry for Australia.

"Maybe 'legacy' is too strong a word but we can build something for the next generation."