With wool prices finally catching up to a red-hot sheepmeat market, Merino stud breeders say their determination to remain pure is now being vindicated. Goondiwindi stud sheep breeder and livestock producer Mark Murphy had a clear message for the Merino 2020 conference last month. It's not hard to be constructive with a pure Merino. But even he picked up a few pointers from his involvement with the Merino Validation Project (MVP), which he joined during 2003. He told conference delegates that the program gave him a better direction in what to look for in the sheep industry and how to get it in his own sheep. "When we went into the MVP, the meat side of the sheep industry was ruling the roost. "But the big issue for many producers was the lack of data about the overall performance of their stock. "The program ran for three years and after that some pulled out, but we didn't because we saw enough to encourage us to stick with it.
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