Dr Nan Bray
A marine physicist who chose sheep farming learned that reducing stocking rates solves animal welfare and land regeneration at once.
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Dr Nan Bray grew up hearing stories about working dogs and ranch horses, longing to farm despite her parents' insistence on a profession. She became a physical oceanographer instead, spending years researching ocean currents at MIT, Woods Hole, and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Then, on a visit to Tasmania in the 1990s, she glimpsed sheep grazing near Government House with the Marine Labs visible beyond, and realised she could have both farming and oceanography in the same place.
When she started sheep farming, she was fortunate to meet David Carnes, a retired stockman who came out of retirement at 75 to teach her conventional wool growing. But as she learned about Fred Provenza's research on how animals self-medicate and nourish themselves when given biodiversity and knowledge, everything changed. She stopped weaning lambs at three months and let them stay with their mothers for two to three years instead. She hasn't needed to drench an animal since 2009. She stopped mulesing, tail docking, and eventually stopped sending sheep to slaughter altogether. When she got to know individual sheep as she shepherded them, particularly pet lambs like Vicki, she realised she couldn't put them on a truck.
The economics didn't work with fewer animals, so she moved up the supply chain and started White Gum Wool, selling knitting yarn made from her sheep's fibre. By 2015 or 2016, the yarn business was profitable. Today she runs about a quarter of the sheep she once did, each producing roughly 30 percent more wool, while the land regenerates and her animals live with their mothers, their social structures intact, their friendships honoured. She has data showing wool quality doesn't degrade with age. She has an assisted living paddock for aging sheep where stress often lifts and they stop falling down. What began as a search for a way to farm has become a quiet proof that reducing stocking rates solves animal welfare and land regeneration at once.
“They are sentient beings with personalities and needs and feelings and friends, and including some of them are friends with me. So that is very humbling.”
“I have never lost a sheep to fly in 25 years of running, you know, non-mule sheep. But you do have to pay attention. You got to monitor and you have to treat.”
“What I have learned is that my sheep do much better if they can stay at home with their flock. There is that social structure is a support, emotional support, and even a physical support for the animals.”
The hero, today
When Dr Nan Bray stopped weaning lambs at three months and instead let them stay with their mothers for two to three years, she has not needed to drench an animal on the property since 2009, because the lambs learned from their mothers where to find the plants that keep them healthy. The quality of wool from Dr Nan Bray's sheep shows almost no decline with age over ten years of tracking individual animals, with tensile strength and micron measurements staying consistent even in her oldest sheep Alice, which means the industry's belief that wool degrades rapidly with age is not supported by her data. Dr Nan Bray reduced her stocking rate to a quarter of what she used to run, which means her animals grow about 30 percent more wool each while the environment has room to recover, proving that fewer animals producing higher-quality fibre can work economically and ecologically. David Carnes showed Dr Nan Bray that sheep need to be managed as sentient beings with personalities, needs, and friendships rather than machines that eat grass and grow wool, a shift that she says has made her a much richer person emotionally and spiritually. Dr Nan Bray identifies transparency in the supply chain as the key to changing animal welfare in the wool industry, because right now customers cannot communicate with farmers on the ground, manufacturers often do not know where their wool comes from, and brokers have no motivation to make that connection visible. When sheep are moved to Dr Nan Bray's assisted living paddock because they have fallen down in the main flock, very often they do not fall down again, suggesting the stress of trying to keep up with the flock was part of the problem, not age itself.
Yes. Dr Nan Bray is a real person who shared their own story in their own words. Kintsugi Heroes is a not-for-profit that shares first-person stories of overcoming adversity, told with the person's consent.
Kintsugi Heroes, a registered Australian not-for-profit. Every story is shared with the hero's own consent and reviewed under Kintsugi Heroes' trauma-informed content standard before it goes public.
When Dr Nan Bray stopped weaning lambs at three months and instead let them stay with their mothers for two to three years, she has not needed to drench an animal on the property since 2009, because the lambs learned from their mothers where to find the plants that keep them healthy.
The quality of wool from Dr Nan Bray's sheep shows almost no decline with age over ten years of tracking individual animals, with tensile strength and micron measurements staying consistent even in her oldest sheep Alice, which means the industry's belief that wool degrades rapidly with age is not supported by her data.
Dr Nan Bray reduced her stocking rate to a quarter of what she used to run, which means her animals grow about 30 percent more wool each while the environment has room to recover, proving that fewer animals producing higher-quality fibre can work economically and ecologically.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 00:01
Welcome to another episode of Animals and Us, where we explore and honor the awesomeness of animals and our relationships with them. Today we're joined by Dr. Nan Bray, an innovative Tasmanian sheep farmer, marine scientist, and passionate advocate for ethical wool production. Nan is the owner of White Gum Wool, where she pioneered a compassionate, land-friendly way of farming that's as kind to the sheep as it is to the environment. With her zero slaughter, no mulesing, no tail docking approach, Nan is reshaping the wool industry, proving that it's possible to produce high-quality wool while prioritizing animal welfare and ecological health. Follow the sun, which way the wind blows. Hello, Nan, and welcome to Animals and Us.
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 01:01
Thank you.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 01:03
It really is such an honor, Nan. As we've spoken before, you're aware that I've had about over 20 years of experience with sheep and cattle farming, and my— most of my time was out on Longreach in Western Queensland, so very different country to, to your country. But I remember year after year some of the husbandry practices I found abhorrent, like the mulesing and some others that you'll be touching on later.
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 01:31
And I always thought to myself, there's got to be a better way, there's got to be a better way.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 01:38
And then I've just recently discovered you and the fact that you actually have developed a better way. So I'm really looking forward to finding out about your, your sheep management production and, and how you, you do it in such an animal friendly way. So once again, welcome, and let's start with your— with the beginning and your childhood.
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David Carnes showed Dr Nan Bray that sheep need to be managed as sentient beings with personalities, needs, and friendships rather than machines that eat grass and grow wool, a shift that she says has made her a much richer person emotionally and spiritually.
This conversation includes stories of working dogs and stock horses, a decade as a physical oceanographer, sheep appear in the government house paddock, learning from a retired stockman, refusing to mulesing and fred provenza's nutritional wisdom changes everything.
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 02:00
So you—
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 02:02
your life story began a long way from Tasmania, Australia. Your life began in the United States. Can you talk about your childhood and how animals entered your life?
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 02:13
Thank you. Look, it's lovely to be here and have a chance to talk to your audience about what I'm doing. So I grew up mostly in the United States. We had a little sojourn into Italy for a couple years. My dad was an engineer, but he himself grew up on the land, as did my mother, during the Depression, the Great Depression. And so I grew up with all the stories of animals, particularly working dogs, but also horses. And my dad's family ranch was still in his family. My uncle ran it. So I spent holidays on the farm, mostly it's on the ranch. Mostly it seemed like we went there in January and then we had to go and, you know, bring in cattle in the cold. But I got to ride absolutely amazingly clever cow ponies and watch other people use their dogs. So I really, I think through my childhood, I developed a sort of longing to be a farmer in some way. But I can clearly remember both my parents utterly rejecting the idea that anyone could make a living at farming and insisting that I should have a profession. So I, being a moderately dutiful daughter, unlike my sister, I thought, "Okay, yep, I'm gonna do it." But I never let go of that longing. And the longing was about the relationship between animals, between animals and humans, but also between animals and animals. So like with the cow pony, all I had to do really was just stay on. And that cow pony knew exactly what to do. The cow pony did a, you know, turned on a dime, 180-degree turn. I just had to hang on and stay with it. And the cow pony knew exactly what she was doing. So those, I think, really made an impression on me. And I pretty much never left. So as we go on through the history, you'll hear those ideas and those things coming back. With the working dogs, that was my mom's dad who had a, what he called a cow dog, what she called a cow dog, which I now know was a Border Collie by the name of Jack. And Jack, the stories about Jack were that he, my grandfather could just sit on the back porch and say, okay Jack, time to go get the cows in for milking. And off Jack would go down the lane and come back with cows to milk. And I just thought, it's amazing. —That's clever. So yeah, so those stories really stuck with me. Yeah. Nan, can you clarify for the mainly Australian audience what a cow pony is? So that's a working horse, but specifically trained to anticipate where a rogue cow might decide to go and to keep, in the same way really that sheepdogs do, keep a herd together. So, and there's a, like with working dogs, there's a lot of training associated with cow ponies. But the cowboys of the West were riding cow ponies in that sense. So it's not a pony pony in the sense you're thinking of it. It's just what it got called for some reason. They're full-grown horses, you know, full-sized horses. Stock horses. Stock horses. There you go. That's the word we're looking for.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 05:32
So you began your career as a marine scientist. Can you tell us about the nature of that work?
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 05:39
Yes, well, I was a bit like Tigger in Winnie the Pooh. It took me a long time to figure out what I liked best academically. So I had a number of majors. And at one point I got very interested in marine mammals and thought that might be where I would go. But I got sidetracked into ocean currents And ended up doing my undergraduate degree at Berkeley was in what was called engineering physics, which allowed me to do a lot of the marine, sorry, the fluid mechanics courses that I needed then to go on to graduate school. And so I went to graduate school on the East Coast of the US. It was a joint program between MIT and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. And yeah, I worked in the Atlantic and did a fair bit of— spent a fair bit of time doing research at sea. And then when I finished my PhD, I moved back to California, which is where my family was based, and worked for Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which is part of the University of California. And that— I finished my PhD in about '81, I think, and I worked the University of California until I moved to Australia permanently, which would have been in 1997. So I had quite a few years of being an ocean physicist— physical oceanographer is what it's called— and spent a lot of time traveling. And that's actually how I ended up here. I was visiting some colleagues at CSIRO's Marine Labs in Hobart, and I just kind of fell in love with Tasmania. I think because Tassie reminded me a lot of Idaho. The family ranch country in that there's the open farmland, rangeland sort of parts of Tasmania, which is similar to the southern part of Idaho. But then there's also the equivalent of the World Heritage Areas in Idaho, primitive areas, which Tassie has its own. And plus it had an ocean, plus it had a place I could actually get paid a salary to work. So it just seemed like a really great place to move. And I was kind of at a crossroads in life. I was not long divorced, didn't have children. So I was pretty much a free agent. And I thought, no, I think I'm going to give this a try. So I did. I came as a visitor for a year, so I didn't give up my other job. And then I got— during that year, I actually got a job with CSIRO. So then I finally did give up my job at University of California, moved here.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 08:22
So you're working for the CSIRO in Tasmania, and how did you encounter sheep? What was your first, your first experience with sheep?
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 08:33
It was actually the, the very first visit that, um, uh, I only had, uh, nominally I had a week to visit with colleagues coming back from an expedition in the Indian Ocean, and a friend of mine picked me up at the airport and we're driving back into Hobart, and on your right-hand side is Government House, and in the front paddock of Government House, there were sheep grazing. I have to say, I have never since seen sheep grazing there, but just at the moment, I'm looking at these sheep and I can see Hobart, and then my friend George said, "Oh, and you can see the Marine Labs right there ahead of you," and I went, "Oh my goodness, I could have sheep?" and oceanography, like, within sight of each other. And yes, so that was kind of— I was like, oh, okay, this is a place I could, I could do both things. I could have the taste of farming that I so much wanted to have but still have a salary. I really didn't know very much about sheep, even though I'd been trialing. I thought I— I really thought I knew how to work livestock with dogs, and sadly that turned out to not be true. Um, but I'd never had to acquire my own sheep before, so I took myself off to a livestock auction, and I was just— I just wanted a few ragtag sheep. I wasn't, you know, trying to grow anything that could grow beautiful wool or anything like that. And, uh, I ended up accidentally bidding against myself because I couldn't figure— I couldn't follow. So I had to— yes, I had this little ragtag group of sheep to play with. And then it just, it kind of kept growing, you know, it was like, well, okay, I've got these sheep and then I got a couple more dogs and then I needed more sheep and then I really didn't have enough room in the place I was living. So it's like, okay, let's look at getting a real farm. And eventually that led to my buying the place where I am now. On the maps, officially it's called Lemon Hill. Lemon was apparently actually Lemon, and he was a notorious bushranger who ended up with his head on a spike in Hobart. So I try to avoid using that name. Um, but when I started the yarn business, I, I wanted something that would convey something about the property itself, but that was kinder than a bushranger. And I have a lot of remnant white gum, Eucalyptus viminalis trees on the place. So most of it's been plowed many, many times, but there are areas that were too rocky to plow. And so I have a few stands of these beautiful old white gums. So that's how it got its name.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 11:25
So when you began sheep husbandry, did you practice mainstream methods at first? Did you just, would you just follow the convention or did you start with your own way?
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 11:39
Okay, so I'm smiling because as it turns out, in spite of sort of thinking as I was driving up the highway and looking at sheep, how hard could it be to grow sheep? I didn't know anything about what I was doing. And I lucked into finding a retired stockman, David Carnes, Mr. Dave or Davey, who I had met through the dog trials, because I had— did start dog trialing the very first year before I bought this farm. And he'd been retired for, I don't know, 10 years or something, and he hated being retired. So I asked him if he would come and help me, and he said, yeah, he would for a few months. And he— so he did. He came out of retirement at the age of 75 and stayed with me for 13 years and retired again at 87. So, um, he was the one who taught me really everything I knew about conventional wool growing. And even he wasn't particularly hidebound. He was— there were things that he'd objected to but hadn't been in a position to keep from happening on the places he'd managed. So for instance, he'd never— he'd always been opposed to mulesing. And when I first started and I understood what mulesing was, I went, oh, I don't think I want to do that. And my wool agent said, well, that's all right. You don't have to do it. We'll get a contractor. And I'm like, no, no, you don't understand. I don't want that done here. And when I asked David, he said, no, you don't need to. We'll, we'll manage around it. So we did. Um, but yes, he, he's the one who taught me, um, sort of conventional systems for wool growing.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 13:17
And could you describe to the audience what mulesing is, the practice of mulesing, which you've chosen not to do?
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 13:25
Yeah, so mulesing is actually named after a veterinarian by the name of Dr. Mules. So it's a very funny word, um, and his idea was that with merinos on their breech, uh, typically they have a little wrinkle that catches moisture. It'll catch urine if it's a ewe, or, or moisture more generally. And that, that's a place that will attract flies for fly strike. And as most Australians would know, that's one of the main management issues for sheep is preventing flies from laying their eggs on sheep. And then the maggots hatch and the maggots will actually eat into the flesh of the animal. It's not a nice thing at all. And it can be fatal, although usually what's fatal is infection from the wound. Rather than the flies actually, you know, literally killing the sheep. So it's, it's a non-trivial management issue and you can't just ignore it. But what Dr. Mull said was, well, look, if we just took the skin off of those two little wrinkles and let scar tissue heal over that, there wouldn't be that little wrinkle to catch the fluid and there wouldn't be wool there because it'd be scar tissue. So it was a very small intervention. And by the standards of the time, I think we're talking 35, 40 years ago now, we, you know, nobody did pain relief for anything. It wasn't that bad a thing to do, but it got somehow the contractors who did it sort of got, seemed to get this idea that more would be better. So they started taking more and more skin to the point where you know, when you crutch an animal, you shear that whole area of their bum. Mulesing started to become more like crutching, but taking the skin off. And that was kind of where it was when I started. And I just went, no, not doing this. So yeah, so that's where, that's mulesing. And what Davey said was, we will treat the animals in a jetting race with a solution that will deter the flies. For, you know, a few weeks and then we'll treat them again through fly season until we don't have flies around and we'll do it again the next year. And, and he was absolutely right. So as far as I know, I have never lost a sheep to fly in 25 years of running, you know, non-mule sheep. But you do have to pay attention. You got to monitor and you have to treat. And eventually I found an organic compound that was certified for fly control, and I used that for about 10 years, but a couple years ago my flies developed a resistance to it, so I'm back to more standard chemicals.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 16:15
Yeah. And you have described your approaches as letting your sheep live as natural a life as possible. Can you describe what that means in practice?
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 16:24
It's a whole spectrum of things, um, and it's It's a set of ideas that evolved over time. So when I started trying to put Fred Provenza's nutritional wisdom ideas into practice, a number of things happened. Some of them happened very quickly and others took a little bit longer. But I'll just back up and say what nutritional wisdom is. So that's a term that's been used to describe his research. I'm not sure Fred thinks it's the best term, but What it's describing is an autonomic response that all animals, including us, have. If you eat something, a few hours later, after you've had a chance to digest it, your system will know whether that was good for you or not, and it'll send a signal back to your brain saying, you know that thing you tasted, really smelled? A few hours ago, that was okay, you're good with it. Or it might send a signal back going, "Mm, you know, not so good, you ate too much of that," or, "It's really not good, don't eat it again." So that feedback that happens with foraging is like, it's an involuntary thing, you can't control it. So what Fred's research was showing was that if you give animals the opportunity, so they got a range of things to eat, which you could call biodiversity if you were so inclined, and the knowledge about what those different things do for them, which mostly comes from learning from their mothers, then animals will be— they will nourish themselves, they will self-medicate for whatever things they are experiencing. So it's fairly straightforward. I mean, there's this complicated science behind the chemicals. But in terms of the behavior, animals need opportunity, so there's got to be biodiversity in the environment. And they need knowledge, because although their systems are telling them, yep, what you just ate was good, not good, what it doesn't tell them is where is it in the environment, how does it affect you when the conditions are dry as opposed to when the conditions are wet, etc., etc. Those are the things that your mother teaches you. The pivot point for me after the long dry and the containment feeding was, ah, okay, we've got to get the biodiversity back into the system as much as is possible. And that includes weeds. Weeds are a perfectly good source of biodiversity. I have no problem. In fact, I like my weeds because they do add to the overall biodiversity. And then I have to give the lambs the chance to learn from their mothers, which means you can't wean them. You have to let them stay with their mothers at least for probably 2 or 3 years before that learning reaches what we would call local adaptation, that the animals really do know where things are and what they do for them. Conventionally, we would be weaning at 3 or 4 months, and that's equivalent— excuse me— in this context, that's equivalent to sending your 2-year-old toddler into the grocery store and hoping that they'll choose vegetables. There's just no knowledge. And so when I started, I was hoping, I thought, okay, well, if it just means that I don't have to drench my weaners more than, you know, 3 or 4 times in the first 6 months, then I'm going to consider this a huge win. And in fact, I have not needed to drench an animal on the property since 2009. So it's at 17, 16 years. So it, in that sense, it has absolutely worked. So those ewes knew enough about the landscape. And I, at that point, I was running very few animals. So the biodiversity was having a chance to come back. And so, and I run, it took a few years to convince Davey. He was opposed to the idea of running everybody in one big flock. For good reasons, but, but I needed it. I needed to go the other way. So in the end, I got him to come along with me on it.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 20:51
Can you tell us about the philosophy behind White Gum Wool and how it differs from conventional wool production? You've already touched on, on some of it, like not mulesing and not, not weaning, not removing the lambs from the ewes.
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 21:07
Yeah, so again, you know, it's not like I sat down and went, okay, here's my philosophy. I would have to say that where I am now with the way I would describe my management philosophy is a result of a lot of trial and error and a whole lot of lessons from my animals and the landscape. So I describe this as, you know, learning to observe without an agenda behind it, you know, in other words, to really just see what the natural system is telling you. And the, but the process of doing that was iterative, to put it mildly. And, and it started with move, actually choosing to actively shepherd the animals through the property. So I do have a fair bit of biodiversity. It's very patchy. It's in the corners. The animals don't know, wouldn't necessarily go there. So I used to take the animals to those areas, grazing them slow, moving them slowly so they would actually graze, and then hold them there for hours. It's just like, you don't have to eat, but you have to stay here. Kind of like, you know, you don't have to clean up your plate, but you have to stay at the table until I tell you you can go. And so a number of things happened through that process. One was that I realized, I began to understand how strong the social structure of a flock is when you leave multiple generations in the flock, when you leave the babies with their mothers and they've got their grandmothers and their aunts and uncles. And so it's very, very strongly social. And that was one of the first things that struck me. But also the whole thing about how leadership works is another thing which we can touch on later. And but probably the main thing that then influenced the next set of discussions, next set of decisions that I made was that I got to know the animals as individual animals. So I had a few pet lambs. Turns out my pet lambs, particularly Vicki, had a penchant for boyfriends. And she has, I don't know, 10 or 12 boyfriends because she would hang out with me while we were shepherding. I was on foot. She'd hang out with me and they would hang out with her. So they hung out with me. So I got to know them. And it became much more of a personal, you know, human to animal interaction. And so that led to, well, that led to my decision not to send my sheep to slaughter anymore. I just didn't wanna put 'em on a transport truck. It wasn't so much going to the abattoir, but that's partly 'cause you don't see that. The part you see is a farmer is putting 'em on a truck. And I just went, you know what? I'm not gonna do it. So before that, when I got the nutrition right and stopped having problems with worms, I decided I didn't need to dock the tails. So that was sort of the sequence. We started running them in family groups, not weaning. We put them all in one flock. We stopped tail docking. We started shepherding. We made friends with the sheep. And then we decided, I'm going to send the sheep for slaughter. So that whole where I am now really is the result of about 5 years of just learning, basically.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 24:54
And can you describe the social structure of a sheep community when sheep are just left being, being sheep?
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 25:03
Yes, um, but what you see in the, in the flock is there is, uh, certainly there's usually one leader that I call the point A to point B leader. So that's one that's good going through gates, makes a decision when it's sort of time to get up at the end of rest and ruminate in the middle of the day.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 25:22
And is that leader a ewe, a female?
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 25:26
Well, it's hard to say for sure. It certainly has been, but then I had mostly ewes when I started this. I don't think there's any inherent reason that a wether couldn't take on that role. It's not always easy to figure out who the leader is. But the leader when I started was a cranky old thing called, I called her Her Royal Highness. She's a lot like my mother actually. I could have called her Frances, but I didn't think of it at the time. But she was not good at other things. So she was not adventuresome when it came to looking for different places to forage. She didn't have any sense that I could ever tell where water was. So while I was shepherding and arguing with her a lot about who was in charge, which she mostly won those arguments, I have to say, she had various ways of doing that. But I realized that there were other sheep that were good at, they were more adventuresome about foraging. And there are certainly sheep that cannot go past a water trough without detouring. They'll take everybody with them if they possibly can. So I think there are lots of different elements of leadership. But even Her Royal Highness, who was a very strong leader, if the rest of the flock hadn't really finished resting and ruminating, they just wouldn't get up and go with her. So she'd get up, walk away in the direction she wanted to take the flock. And then if nobody followed her, she'd give up and come back. And then maybe 20 minutes later, she'd try again. If she'd get 3 or 4 sheep to follow her, then she'd move a little bit farther and eventually then everybody would get up and go. So I learned a lot about how the flock as a whole makes decisions. And it is very— democratic isn't quite right, but it kind of is. They vote with their feet. And, you know, if they're not ready to go, they don't go. You know, even for Her Royal Highness.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 27:29
Then because you have adopted different approaches, different techniques to sheep husbandry, including not slaughtering. How do, how do other, other farmers, other local people around you react to your different approach?
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 27:48
Uh, well, look, I've been here long enough and I'm actually friends with many of my farming neighbors. And, um, I think over the years there's been a sort of a reluctant respect for the fact that, uh, because of the yarn business, which we'll get to, um, I'm able to make a profit doing what I'm doing at the scale I'm doing it. And they all know how challenging that is. That said, in terms of what I do, they mostly think I'm mad as a box of frogs.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 28:19
Well, this might be a good time to tell us about White Gum Wool, the yarn side of your business.
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 28:27
Okay. Well, once I started doing, getting the nutrition right and the health of the animals right, and I realized that in order to have that biodiversity in the system, you have to have abundance. You can't have too many mouths because they're going to eat the biodiversity first and then all that's left is grass. And that looks like most conventional properties. So I kept reducing the stocking rate down and down and down and down, and now I run about a quarter of what I used to run. I grow— the individual animals grow about 30% more wool than they used to. There are less costs, there's less labor, there's all sorts of great things about it, but not enough to close the gap. Of income from having only a quarter as many animals. And then I decided not to send them for slaughter, so I lost that income as well. Um, before I just made that decision, I realized after a couple of years that no matter how well I managed the smaller flock, I could not make ends meet. The fixed costs of the farm are just too much. So that's when I decided to move up the supply chain and see if I couldn't capture some of the margin that other people were getting off my wool. Um, before that, I was selling to Italian men's suiting mills in Italy, you know, in Italy for Italian men's suiting. And I knew the quality of the wool was, was really lovely. I didn't know if it would make good knitting yarn, which is the, um, thing that I settled on to try because it was— well, honestly, I, I couldn't do garments because I have no fashion sense whatsoever. And I just had this horrible image of, you know, owning 30,000 things that nobody wanted and that were too small for me. So I just went, no, no, we're not doing garments. And I kind of stumbled into the idea of knitting yarn. I'm not a— I was not a knitter. I can now knit. I have taught myself to, but, um, and I just, a bit like the farm itself, I just kind of leaped into it. I didn't do a lot of market research. I just went, oh, let's see if we can make this work. So, um, I lucked out and found a really good mill in the end in New Zealand. It was the only place that I could find that would process my superfine fiber into knitting yarn. And then it took a couple years to actually develop a market for it, although there was a lot of interest for both because it's beautiful yarn but also because of the story. So knitters, as it turns out, really don't want to feel guilty about what they're using as a raw material, as a artist's material, is the way I think of it. So it was probably 3 years after I got my first shipment of yarn that I finally broke even, because you put a lot of money— you invest a lot in the processing compared to the cost of the raw material. Um, but yes, ever since, uh, so I started that in 2013, I'd say since about 2015 or 2016, um, it's been, you know, the, the the market, my customer base has grown, and it's, um, it's a nicely profitable enterprise. So it was in that context that when I decided not to send my sheep to slaughter, I knew I, I would be able to afford it, um, even if it meant that I wasn't going to make as much money as I would otherwise.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 31:49
And how long do your sheep typically live for?
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 31:52
Ah, see, that's such a good question. A lot of people ask that, and Of course, we have no idea as an industry in an actuarial sense, you know, what's the life expectancy of a Merino or even a crossbred because we kill them all off at age 7 or 8. So you don't get to learn that. You do hear anecdotes of, you know, sheep that are 16 and still having a lamb. Yikes. My oldest sheep so far is Alice, who died at the age of about 15 and a half a couple of years ago. Must be 3 years ago now. I've recently been trying— so I kind of know how old they can get. What I don't know is what the life expectancy is. But I've been doing some reanalyzing some data because you keep track of deaths and I keep track of the ear tag color. And so I know how old that sheep was when it died. A little bit of work, but going back a few years now, it's looking like somewhere between 10 and 12 years is the natural life expectancy. The main cause of death other than old age is skin cancers that are not operable. So we can deal with ears, skin cancers on ears. And I have a lot of sheep that have only one or zero ear flaps who've been, you know, been operated on several years ago. So that, that's quite successful. Any other place on the face, which is where you see the skin cancers, We've just recently done a nose because she was one of my much-loved pets— is one of my much-loved pets. And that was successful, which is amazing to me because we haven't had any success with that before. But I just went, oh no, it's Clara, we got to try. Um, I have a really good vet. Um, that's the other thing that, that the yarn business lets me do. I can, I can afford to bring a vet in to take care of animals. So, um, that's, that's a real help. Um, both literally and also sort of psychically.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 33:53
Yes. And I remember you saying when we previously had a chat that your— the fiber of your wool is— remains fine. I mean, the quality of the fiber of your wool remains at a high quality through—
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 34:08
throughout and until the sheep are quite old. Yeah. So when I— as soon as I After I'd made the decision, and then I started thinking about the consequences of that decision, I was like, okay, my first question to myself was, oh my God, what am I going to do with all the bodies of dead sheep? And then I realized after I did the sums, you know, sort of did the arithmetic, I realized that by stretching out the demographic and keeping the flock size the same, I would only be looking at losing maybe 30 to 50 sheep max a year. And that's how many I need for replacement. So then that got more manageable. And what I do with that is I actually have a fellow who comes and pre-digs grave holes for me so that when a sheep dies, I've got a hole to put them in and can bury them. And then I plant a tree on top of that. So that part we got through okay. But there is a very, very strong conviction in the industry that the quality of the wool degrades rapidly with age. And so I needed to know the answer, not that I was going to change the decision, but that that might mean some wool wasn't suitable for what I was trying to do with it. So what I did was I started testing the sheep with names. So this is mostly Vicki's boyfriends, okay? And then any, any other subsequent, um, pet lambs or sheep that for some reason came to my attention and got a name. And I did that because I recognized their faces, and I know that sounds a little bit sad, but pathetic, but I really do. I, I, they, they also have a, a little marker ring on their ear tags so that I can double check it. But I actually do know, I recognize pretty much all the sheep with names. So I track them year to year. I measure everything that AWTA, which is our testing authority, measures when they, um, test a bale of wool. So the length, strength, the yield, the micron, all the coefficients of variation, et cetera.. And I'm doing it on an individual animal as they age. So I've got 10 years of data now. And basically what comes out of that for my sheep, admitting that my sheep are very well nourished, and for the most part have all of their teeth and have good feet and all that stuff. There is almost no change with age. The tensile strength doesn't change. The micron doesn't change. The length Alice's last fleece was down about 10%, but she was still testing at the high range and of tensile strength, which is my primary issue for getting the fiber milled. It's got to be— got to have good tensile strength. So I just stopped. I've basically stopped worrying about the fact that, yeah, it does. The wool smells different. I think that's a hormonal change. With age. So you can tell an older sheep by the smell of its fleece. And it may, it may change a little bit in terms of color, but that's scourable color. So I don't worry about older sheep. Well, thanks.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 37:13
Into the clip. Yeah. Nan, how do you see the relationship between the health of the land and the environment and the health of your sheep?
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 37:23
They're two sides of the same coin. That was probably the most powerful thing that came out of Fred's research for me, was that because of the link between the animals requiring biodiversity to be maximally healthy and biodiversity requiring abundance, it just means that all you really have to do to make this whole thing work is reduce the number of animals that are grazing on the property. As long as you've got abundance, you'll have healthy animals. And as long as you have abundance, your environment will be healthy. So it's just like, this is easy, except for the, except for the financial part. Okay, that part's not easy. But in terms of the actual management, it's totally straightforward. And that was such a relief for me because I was trying to solve both of those things independently. And the moment where I went, Ah, same thing, just two sides of the same thing. It's easy, I can do this.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 38:24
Yes, yes. And Nana, what has it been, this way of sheep farming, how has that affected you personally or even perhaps spiritually?
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 38:37
Ah, you know, coming into farming as an engineer and a scientist, a physicist, Even though I had a connection with the dogs, I'd never really had that much of a connection with the sheep. I did enjoy wildlife when, you know, when I could, when I had a chance to observe them on backpacking trips and things. But I think it was really Davey who was very, very empathetic about his animals. And he, so he was the one that taught me So it shifted me from, it's not quite as stark as this, but not far off, that sheep are not just little machines that eat grass and grow wool. They are sentient beings with personalities and needs and feelings and friends, and including some of them are friends with me. So that is very humbling. I think any arrogance that I brought into farming got— some of it just got bashed out of me, and a lot of it got sort of gently shifted through my interaction with the animals. So the end result of that is a huge attachment to the whole, the whole of what I do. Um, uh, it's, it's, it's hard to describe. And I, and I imagine that, um, you know, for First Nations people in Australia, um, who've, you know, I've been attached to my place for 25 years. Imagine if you'd been, had that level of attachment through multiple generations and, you know, 40 to 60,000 years. It has really, I think, allowed me to have a better appreciation of what that experience has been for First Nations Australians. And I'm a much richer person emotionally and spiritually than I was when I started farming.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 40:55
Nettle Davey was a strong influence on you. If you didn't have Davey's influence, influence in the early stages, do you think you would have adopted this, this different approach to sheep husbandry? Or perhaps you would have reached the same point eventually?
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 41:15
I don't think I'd be farming, right? I think I would have given it up, um, as, as either too hard or just you know, it's just not something I was ever going to get to be good at. And even to this day, I feel like I'm nowhere near as good at managing lambing ewes as Davy was. And, uh, and I managed to sidestep that for a few years by buying lambs in. But one of the issues that I had with that— there are two issues. One of buying the lambs without their mothers means that they've got to learn from their peers in the flock. And that takes longer than if they were, had their mothers. But probably the more important thing from my perspective is their mothers teach them manners. You know, it's like those guys, the ones I bought in, I would find them in the far ends of paddocks. They'd be wild as, you know, as a box of frogs in the shed. There was just, they, they weren't— they hadn't grown up in that social structure. So, um, yeah, so the, the lambing thing is, for me, is a real, um, you know, and I think back historically, Davey pretty much managed all the lambing. Um, so if I hadn't had Davey, I'd have given up just on lambing alone, I think, early on. But also It was the fact that Davey was very highly respected as a stockman in the, in the community. And so even though I was doing slightly nutty things, Davey stayed with me. And, and I think that helped hugely to allow me to be accepted in the community. But no, I can't really, I can't imagine a track of getting to this point without having had friendship with Davey to start.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 43:14
So then you have developed a way of running sheep productively and ethically in a very animal-friendly, kind way. Have you noticed other farmers following your way?
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 43:29
Is it catching on? Uh, not so much. Um, I think, um, You know, as you would know, the industry is a pretty conservative industry, and it's also an industry that's under a lot of financial stress, and increasingly so with climate change. Something's going to have to give here sooner rather than later, I think, because of the environmental changes associated with climate change, which, you know, full disclosure, I was a climate change scientist, so I do know about this stuff. But I didn't know about it, of course, in a farming context until I became a farmer. But I think there's, you know, people will look at me and go, there's a couple things that they'll say, "Oh, well, what you do, we couldn't scale it up to our scale." And I totally reject that argument. And I reject it when they give it to me. It's like, show me what part of what I do is actually connected to scale in a way that couldn't be scaled up. But I think the other part is, it's just— the only way I can describe it is it's a failure of imagination. I don't think people can imagine themselves doing what I do. And so it's kind of annoying for them at the moment because now I've been doing it for a while and I just recently I just recently won first prize in a fleece competition at the Campbelltown Show. And I haven't won first there. It's a very, talk about a conservative, you know, sort of closed club. But, you know, it's like, it's really kind of tough, I think, for people to accept that I can grow that kind of, that level of quality of wool, that I can make a living, you know, with the yarn, and then I can do what I do. It's like, it's getting harder to say, well, I couldn't possibly do that. You could possibly do it, but you'd have to choose to. And so far, not very many people are choosing to. So, so I just figure my job is, you know, in a karmic sense, my job is to show these guys that it's possible, that you can't say you couldn't do it. You can say, I'm not going to do it, I don't want to do it, I don't think it's a good idea, but you can't say it's not possible because here we are. You've shown that it is possible. It's possible.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 46:11
Yeah. Nan, do you ever have open days whereby other farmers can actually come and discover how you operate?
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 46:22
I have had a few in the long distance, long distant past. When I first started learning about Fred's stuff, I was so excited. I was like, everybody's going to want to know this stuff. It's so cool. And everybody didn't want to know it. I have, and then I went through a period where I went, you know what, I just have to stop proselytizing because it's making me sad and crazy that people are not ready to hear. If they're not ready to hear, No point in me trying to get them by the lapels and go, you should pay attention to this. So I do occasionally go to webinars or seminars that are offered by AWI and occasionally get a question or a comment. But I think for the most part, either people don't know what I do or are threatened by it in some way. And to be fair, by implication, I am saying to them, you could do this better than you're doing it. And so that's, you know, that's a bit confronting.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 47:26
Especially people who've been running sheep for generations.
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 47:30
Yeah. And who know, who actually know in their hearts that they don't really want to be treating animals the way that the system kind of requires them to. So, yeah, so that part's quite tricky. Yeah, so I've, at this point, mostly I do things like, you know, talk on podcasts like yours and others where the audience is more open to some of these different ideas. And, and I do talk to my neighbors, you know, we We, we get together socially and, you know, I do talk to them, but I don't try to convince anybody anymore that they should do things the way I do them.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 48:17
Yeah. Nan, what would you like to see in the, in the broader wool and, and fashion industries when it comes to animal welfare?
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 48:26
I think the, the main issue we've got there is transparency in the supply chain, and I know that sounds kind of nerdy, but until customers who are buying garments are able to communicate with people who are growing that fiber on the ground, the middle part of the chain has almost no motivation to change. So, you know, I can push at it from this end, but it's a bit like pushing wet spaghetti up a pipe or something, you know, just And for consumers, basically, you know, their only connection is with the manufacturer. And if the manufacturer doesn't really feel that pressure, in many cases, the manufacturer doesn't actually know where that wool came from or where that fiber came from. So there's a responsibility on both ends. But the key thing is to get a transparency through the whole supply chain. So that customers can understand, for instance, what I've just explained to you about mulesing. You know, it started as something that wasn't that objectionable. It became really objectionable. There are other ways to deal with it. So I think that knowledge and awareness and even respect for what farmers are faced with, what they're trying to do, and what consumers want to see happen. Farmers need to respect that. Consumers need to understand and respect. But, but that supply chain is, it's pretty much closed in the middle because of the system of auction and brokers. And brokers have at this point absolutely no motivation, and I accept that that's the reality, for allowing that transparency to happen, because their whole thing is to be able to corral a certain part of the supply market and, and connect it to a certain part of the demand market. And if that becomes transparent, then in their minds, I believe they see that as, um, very threatening to their financial future. So in order to get that transparency, we're going to have to somehow bring the brokers into the tent. And I I don't know how to do that, but I think we have to somehow.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 50:53
Nan, what has this journey taught you about sheep and about humans?
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 51:00
So we haven't really talked that much about managing geriatric sheep. But probably a lot of what I have learned that I haven't yet talked about has to do with end-of-life choices and managing that. And the— it's, you know, the parallels are all over the place between us animals and those animals. And I'm 73, so I'm, you know, I've got some geriatric issues. So that what that does is it allows me to think in a different way about how I want to manage the aging of my animals. So some animals must be euthanized, you know, if we've got an inoperable cancer, that's it. And we do have a humane captive bolt system for that, which is, as far as I've been able to find out from anybody, is the most recommended way to euthanize an animal. Animals are euthanized on the farm. They aren't transported anywhere to be euthanized. And but then the ones that, you know, that make it through, there's about from about 10 to 12 is when the cancers tend to show up, 8 to 12, somewhere in there. So if they make it through that, then it's kind of old age. And it's like, okay, so how do we do that? How do we manage that? And And it is, it's very similar to humans. I actually have a paddock I refer to as the assisted living paddock. What I have learned, and I'm sure all of the geriatric human practitioners would agree with me, is that my sheep do much better if they can stay at home with their flock. There is that social structure is a support, emotional support, and even a physical support for the animals. So I try not to bring them into assisted living until I have to. The other thing is that sheep within that social structure have very strong friendships, and I don't know who their friends are. So I can't, if I bring a sheep out, I can't also snarfle along a few friends. And so one of the things I worried about initially was, I know there are some women that I know that if I got stuck in assisted living with them, I would not be happy. But sheep, I think, are kinder to each other than that. So what does happen is the assisted living sheep very quickly form bonds between them. They teach each other things and they kind of watch out for each other. It's hard to describe. They're in their own separate paddock, are they? So they're in their own— it's a smaller area. It's got a shelter building. It's got shade trees, it's got another area where they can graze. So, but I, it's small enough that I can count the noses every day. So what I've learned, and here we go with the human parallels again, is that once I find a sheep that's gone down and can't get up in the paddock with the main flock, once or twice, that's it, you're into assisted living. And what's interesting to me is that when I bring them into assisted living, Very often they don't fall over again. So I think there is some stress for those sheep in the flock trying to stay up with the flock, whereas assisted living sheep, you know, they just kind of noodle around the paddock. And yeah, so, so, and they mostly have arthritis, but then I have arthritis. I'm not ready to be shot. So trying to bring that humanity and my own experience of aging to bear on the decisions that I make on their behalf has humanised me, and it's— I think it's been really good for the, for the assisted living sheep. And I think you have the luckiest sheep in Australia. I'd like to think so.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 55:15
Nan, how can the audience learn more about White Gum Wool?
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 55:20
So that's a very, uh, it's a really pertinent question just at the moment. So I do have a website, it's whitegumwool.com.au, and on the website there's, uh, quite a lot of background information about the farm and the way I manage, as well as a shop for the yarn. Um, I haven't done much to update that website for quite a while, and we're just in the process of doing that. So one thing we would love is for people to get onto the website and have a bit of a fossick about, and we're actually— we're just working on setting up a survey to get some feedback about the way the website works. So if anybody does get onto the website and wants to, to tell us what worked and what didn't work for them, that would be great. Okay, so it's whitegumwool.com.au.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 56:07
That's right. Great. Nan, thank you very much for your time and, and sharing your, your journey with us. It's very inspiring. I hope it'll be inspiring for some other sheep farmers as well.
Dr Nan Bray (Guest) · 56:21
Thank you, it's been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you, Nan. Animals and Us is a production of Kintsugi Heroes. Thank you to Xavier Rudd for his permission to use Follow the Sun as our theme music for this series. If you enjoyed this conversation, share the podcast with a friend and let us know by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you'd like to support Kintsugi Heroes and the stories we share, head to Kintsugiheroes.com.au and follow the instructions to make a tax-deductible donation. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time. A brand new moon, brand new sun.
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