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Strong biosecurity helps keep sheep healthy and productive while protecting the long-term performance of your business. Managing newly introduced stock and requesting sheep health records are simple steps that can help protect your flock from costly diseases and pests while building a more resilient business.
Productive sheep enterprises are built on sound management decisions that protect animal health, reduce disease risk and maintain flock performance. They also require a significant investment of time, resources and capital.
Protecting that investment requires a proactive approach to biosecurity.
Poor or inconsistent biosecurity can lead to significant financial impacts, including:
A disease outbreak can affect business performance to varying degrees, depending on the disease and its severity. It can impact your income if market access is disrupted and create additional costs if different regulatory requirements must be met.
By making biosecurity part of routine farm management, producers can reduce the risk of preventable diseases becoming costly problems.
While no biosecurity practice can eliminate risk entirely, having robust measures in place helps producers manage risks.
Put simply, biosecurity is a business management tool that helps protect your flock and your bottom line.
Practical biosecurity measures include:
Many properties will have a biosecurity plan in place. If you don’t have one, the farm biosecurity action planner is a good place to start.
Biosecurity planning is an important step to identify biosecurity risks on your farm and design steps to mitigate them. Implementing these planned activities then becomes a part of everyday practice.
Having a dedicated biosecurity plan also allows you to easily review your protocols as risks change.
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Sheep lice are a good example of how inadequate biosecurity can affect business performance.
Lice can spread through a flock before they are detected. While losses may be limited at first, untreated infestations can reduce wool quantity and value over time while increasing treatment and management costs.
Simple biosecurity measures such as quarantining introduced sheep, inspecting them regularly, maintaining good boundary fences and managing stray animals can help reduce the risk of introducing lice onto your property.
Find out more: Sheep Lice – Biosecurity Can Prevent Introduction (LiceBoss).
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Biosecurity practices can also add value to routine livestock transactions and movements.
When purchasing sheep, it’s important to know what you’re bringing onto your property. Sheep with an unknown or poorly documented health status can bring diseases, parasites or other health challenges onto a property. Access to relevant animal health and biosecurity information can help buyers better understand these risks before purchase.
The Sheep Health Declaration (SHD) is a valuable tool in this process. It provides key information about a flock, including past treatments, vaccination history and other details that may help buyers assess risk.
For buyers, the SHD supports timely, informed decision-making and effective planning for ongoing management to enhance on-farm biosecurity.
For sellers, the SHD provides an opportunity to demonstrate their flock’s health status and on-farm biosecurity practices, helping build buyer confidence and support future trading relationships.
The benefits of biosecurity extend beyond the farm gate. Strong biosecurity practices support confidence in Australia’s sheep industry, helping maintain the reputation of Australian sheep and wool products and underpinning access to domestic and international markets.
By protecting your flock and your business, you’re also helping strengthen Australia’s sheep and wool industries.
