SHEEP industry stakeholders have flocked to South Africa during the past few weeks for an international information-swap at the 2014 World Merino Conference.
And as it turns out, African sheep producers are facing similar challenges to Australian farmers.
One issue where Australians shared common-ground with their South African colleagues was dealing with predators.
Native predators, including jackals and lynx, have wreaked havoc on productivity, with the average weaning percentage across South Africa sitting at only 60 per cent.
During the past five years South African sheep producers had been moving away from purely meat sheep, such as Dorpers, to breeds that can cash in on the wool market too.
Cape Mohair and Wool national manager Giepie Calldo travelled with a group of 80 Australian and New Zealand sheep producers on a pre-conference tour in South Africa last week.
Mr Calldo said sheep producers were shifting their focus to a wool producing sheep as predators were often killing up to 20pc of lambs.
"If they aren't getting a lamb they have nothing to sell and therefore no income," he said.
"So farmers who have switched to Merino, Prime SAMM or Dohnes and are able to have a guaranteed income from their flock.
"Having said that, the farmers' main focus is on meat production when breeding these type of sheep."
Former South African farmer of the year and well-known Merino stud breeder Andries Pienaar, Colesberg, said many South African farmers were realising the benefits of breeding a dual purpose animal and had noticed a swing back towards Merinos in recent years.
Mr Pienaar's family had been breeding Merinos for 100 years and he said during that time they had changed their breeding objectives to maximise profitability.
"We now definitely have a focus on carcase traits, but we love good wool," Mr Pienaar said.
"We get about 60pc of the income from the meat and 40pc from wool."
To further improve the their profitability, South African farmers had a heavy focus on increasing lambing and weaning percentages to combat stock losses from predators and theft.
Mr Calldo said farmers wanted to produce a plain bodied, medium-framed animal which was more fertile and lambed easily.
South African sheep farmers were also using guard animals to increase lamb survival.
Prime SAMM breeders Jan and Trix van Biljon, Bothaville, use a combination of Anatolian Shepherd dogs and ostriches.
"We have a big problem with jackals in this part of the world," Mr van Biljon said.
"And we have found the dogs and ostriches work the best for us.
"The dogs are reared with the flock so they establish a close bond and become protective.
"The ostriches are used more to combat stock theft, we raise them in the backyard and hand feed them and they become aggressive when someone comes into the paddock, they keep people off the farm."
According to Mr Calldo the wool producing flock in South Africa was sitting at 17 million head and Merinos were the dominant breed taking up 60pc.
Similar to Australia, wool prices were volatile but were sitting at around R119 per kilogram clean ($1200 cents/kg) which was up 100c/kg on last year.
The average price for lambs at the moment (four to five months-old weighing 26 to 32kg live) was R19 to R25 ($A1.90 to $S2.50/kg).
