A dual-purpose flock earns its money both over the hook and over the wool table, and the same handful of numbers drives both. More lambs scanned and kept alive, a few more grams of daily gain, a sounder staple: these are the benchmarks that find the margin.
The fat reserves of each ewe, scored from 1 to 5 by hand over the backbone.
Breeding ewes that die on farm each year, as a percentage of the flock.
The percentage of the ewe flock replaced each year by ewe hoggets entering it.
Foetuses scanned as a percentage of ewes joined, split into dries, singles and twins.
Lambs marked and weaned as a percentage of ewes joined, with the losses at each stage.
Lambs marked as a percentage of foetuses scanned, split by birth type.
Total weaned-lamb weight as a percentage of the total weight of the ewes joined to produce it.
The average weight of the lambs on the day they are weaned.
Grams of liveweight gained per head per day between weighings, after weaning.
The number of days lambs take to grow from weaning weight to target sale weight.
The share of sale liveweight that becomes hot standard carcase weight.
The percentage of carcases in a consignment that meet the grid's weight and fat specification.
Kilograms of greasy wool cut per head at shearing, by stock class.
The average thickness of the wool fibre in microns, the biggest single driver of wool price.
The percentage of greasy fleece weight left as clean wool after scouring.
How long the wool staple is and how much force it takes to break it, the discount triggers.
Kilograms of clean wool produced per grazing hectare, the wool analogue of net production.
The number of stock carried per hectare of grazing area, expressed in dry sheep equivalents.
Kilograms of lamb and sheep liveweight, plus clean wool, produced per hectare per year.
Total costs of producing lamb, including an owner wage, per kilogram of carcase weight sold.
The average price earned per kilogram of carcase weight, across every lamb sale for the year.
Gross revenue minus variable costs, divided by the dry sheep equivalents carried.
Where each dollar of enterprise income comes from: lamb sales, wool, and cast-for-age sheep.
Total greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram of liveweight produced.
Connect your flock records, scanning results, wool tests and accounts, and Silo keeps every benchmark on this page current, automatically, and answers plain-English questions about any of them.