Ever thought of milking sheep?

The sheep dairyman knows the visiting reporter has endured a lifetime of gushing dairy cow showers.

"See this bucket?" he says, sweeping a ewe's miniature manure pellets into a white chemical pail with a hearth brush.

"We're lucky to fill it in a week."

Of course, it's not just the manure; almost everything about sheep dairying is on a smaller scale.

Burke and wife Bronwyn milk 150 ewes on about 60 useable hectares in a 12-sheep-aside swingover.

The 1960s-era concrete-block dairy is just a hundred metres or so further up the driveway from their boutique cheesemaking facility, Prom Country Cheese.

READ MORE: First raw milk cheese from Victorian cheesemaker

The ewes have two rather than four teats and production is less than a tenth of what you'd expect from a dairy cow, peaking at about 3 litres a day per ewe.

The volume is too small for the reliable operation of automatic cup removers but each litre packs a punch, with a fat content between 5 and 8 per cent and protein at 6 to 7pc.

The sheep graze the almost perpetually lush green grass of Moyarra, South Gippsland, which has a rainfall high enough to be forgotten.

"It's about an inch a week," Mr Brandon said.

"We don't bother recording it anymore."

The diet supplemented by homegrown hay and are enticed to stand quietly in the dairy with just a sniff of grain.

In so many other ways, it's the same as any bovine dairy: there's constant vigilance for mastitis, youngsters need to be trained alongside wiser, older milkers and the males are a pest if they make it into the dairy.

Each milking takes two to three hours and, for five months a year, they milk twice a day.

It's a seasonal operation, with a nine-month lactation, after which all the milkers are dried off.

And while the average ewes weigh about 80kg, a fraction of the 500-700kg frames of Holstein dairy cows, the workload is just as heavy.

As well as the milkings, feeding and pasture work associated with dairy cows, there's the hours spent cheesemaking and selling product as well as the added routine crutching and shearing chores.

Months can pass between social outings for the Brandons and even wedding anniversary dinner is on hold until the ewes are dried off for the season.

But sheep milk, particularly if you have cheesemaking skills, comes with a few bonuses.

The Brandons don't watch global commodity prices and exchange rates with the anxiety of many dairy farmers.

Even so, being part of a niche industry brings some challenges.

The Brandons started off with traditional Coopworth, Dorset, Corriedale dual-purpose breeds crossed with East Friesians.

"You can't just go out and buy milking sheep in Australia so we've had to do a lot of selection over time," Mr Brandon said.

Although the East Friesian is the main milking sheep breed, it has different characteristics in Australia.

"The East Friesian was brought to Australia about 30 years ago to increase the milk of prime lamb mothers so they've been selected for the prime lamb industry, not milking characteristics," Mr Brandon said.

"So things like temperament, conformation of the udder and teats are what we've been selecting on.

"Milk quality is the underlying criteria but not the critical one for us."

To make raw milk cheese, about 20pc of the milking flock was culled to remove any ewes with health issues that could affect the cheese quality.

The ewes average twins so, with 300 lambs a year to serve as replacements, there's the opportunity to sell prime lamb while culling heavily for rapid genetic gain.

And while the sheep are bred primarily for milking, they are also heavy producers of carpet-grade wool.

"Every milking sheep in the world needs shearing because they're selected for milk not wool-shedding ability," Mr Brandon said.

"Lamb is a side business for us.

"They're a bit slow to grow out and take nine to 10 months to grow out but are not fatty.

"The wool grows very fast but it's a coarse wool that really just covers the cost of shearing.

Crutching was far more important and extensive - extending right up the belly - and carried out three times a year because the udder must be kept free of wool.

But one thing was clear, the Brandons wouldn't swap ewes for cows any time soon.

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