So .... farming kangaroos are out ecconomically. Why not go into partnership with the Japanese and farm whales....?

Far fetched - no way after all they are only using them for scientific research after all - and we do have a history of co-operation in other fields as well.

Like I mean to say their troops were guarding our engineer in Burma some 60 years ago and now our troops are returning the favour by guarding their engineers in Iraq....

Or am I just being facetious again?

Ian,

I also have my doubts as to the feasibility of kangaroo farming but in fairness to its proponents how about reworking your figures on a more realistic proposition.

Fence a reasonably square 10000 hectares west of Nyngan, stock with roos and then see how in stacks up. Come to think of it, there is no need to budget for the initial stock, they are already there.
If you stock lightly to manage pasture and turn off kangaroos in good condition, your fences will have to be good enough to keep some of their mates out.

My doubts are decreasing.

I assume culling and harvesting would be carried out with a rifle in both scenarios. Numbers breed up quickly so the ‘herd’ can be culled to suit the availability of food, just as nature does.
On site processing, economies of scale, less erosion, how far they can travel to water, the ratio of bucks to does and so on are all factors to be considered.
You talk of realism, 120 hectares on the north coast of NSW.does not qualify as realistic.

Goeff, the economics will improve under a broadacre scenario but nowhere near enough because the carrying capacity of the land reduces accordingly. So there might be a reduced perimeter to area ratio on the broadacre site but there will be fewer 'roos/ha as well.

To use Ian's costings, a square 10,000ha property will need a fence that is 40km long times $15,000/km which equals $600,000 or $42,000 a year at 7% interest. Cut that into 6 paddocks and you add another 30km of fence at an outlay of $450,000 and another $31,500 in interest for a total of $73,500 a year, before maintenance.

The stocking rate is likely to drop to only 1 'roo/ha or a 10,000 'roo herd. So the interest on the fence, spread over the third (3,300) of 'roos sold will still work out at about $22.25 per animal.

And Ian left out the cost of capital on the remaining herd. You suggested that they are already there and therefore free, but this is not the case. If they could be sold today then they have a value and there must be a return on that value to justify keeping them for another year. Everyone else expects a return of at least 7% on their superannuation then the farmer has a right to expect the same rate of return on his herd.

The price of the herd will be set by the market. Even at the same price per kilogram as beef, 10,000 'roos at 31kg each at $2/kg would put the value of the herd at $620,000 and the return on that value would be $43,400 or another $13.15 for each animal sold.

We also know that 10,000 'roos and 70km of 2.4 metre fence will take more than one wage to look after. So when all the other elements are added up it still looks like an investment that a superannuation trustee would get sued for negligence for if he invested funds in it.

I will prefer to take a ute out west and shoot a few wild ones if ever I want to cook up a roo. It is much cheaper that this investment so ludicruous that no Pitt Street farmer would try it.

On an aside, has anyone tried to cook Koala before? Are there any restaurants that can do the hard work for me?

Also, much of the meat on a kangaroo is too tough to sell as more than pet food. The good cuts will be only a few kilos of the 30 odd you might get on an adult roo, and, even then, you'd have to cook them slowly over a few hours like you would braised lamb shanks to soften them up - unless you want to risk a tough steak. It's very nice.

When cities start producing exports to a degree vaguely similar to rural and regional Australia, then I might listen to criticisms of farmers for not investing in certain areas. Til then, as with most rural matters, it's best left to the farmers themselves.

Perseus,
I have done my time chasing flies [flyblown sheep], driving tractors and I know that farmers are among the most innovative risk-takers in Australia. So I know that if kangaroo farming was economical, someone would be having a go. I don’t think anybody is.

I have some knowledge with which to assess this piece and so I posted to point out what I consider to be a lack of realism in Ian’s piece.
This does not stop me being in agreement with his comment that’ the last thing they [farmers] need when dealing with the environmental challenges they face is the fatuous whimsies of half-baked urban planeteers’.

Thanks for the figures on the ‘Nyngan’ block. We controlled kangaroos with a standard sheep fence and a jump wire above so $15000/Km appears a bit excessive. Perhaps one of the ‘planeteers’ can present a budget showing kangaroo farming to be profitable.

When I'm told that I should be farming roo instead of sheep I just start to explain that the cattle & sheep you see when driving along the road are in fact nothing like the the wild animals from which they originated . The stock you see now are the product of generations of selective breeding to produce higher growth rates & particular caracteristics to suit meat & or fibre production . I then point out that very few if any of the types of animal that our current livestock are decendent of exist anywhere in their original wild state .
I then make the point that the same would almost certainly happen to our native kangaroo if farmed as after years & years of selective breeding , no grower could afford to have their herds of high quality doe's covered by native bucks breaking through & under fences & spoiling the uniformity of their joey's . Thus the farming of kangaroo would almost definitely result in the complete destruction all of wild stocks .
I then state that my preference is that our native kangaroo should stay exactly as they are .
By now interest in the subject has waned & we talk about something else .

Good idea Goeff, perhaps Flannery or Beale could provide us with a more realistic budget for a range of property scales and climes?
Can't say I'm looking forward to seeing the product of 50 years of selective breeding, a fat 'roo that waddles so slowly it can't get to water, falls easy prey to Dingoes and is so heavy its claws do serious damage to soils and, when being turned to steers or being drenched, can rip your teenage son's guts open in a single workplace horror. Intergenerational equity, indeed.

Haven't heard a peep out of 'rent-a-crowd' yet.

To all of the above -

One of the best, most honest and realistic reads I've enjoyed for many years. Thanks to all you farmers for doing the thankless task of feeding the faces of the ungrateful city people. Please keep up your good work.

As for me, I'd have to be pretty damned hungry before I could eat roo, rats, frogs, snakes, goannas, grasshoppers, spiders or any other exotic creatures, including humans. Nah, I just wouldn't buy any of it - unless of course I was starving. But even then I don't know if I'd be able to keep it down.

Kangaroos? Nothing but a bloody pest and menace. We'd do well to get rid of the bloody lot of them.

Kangaroo is delicious, although I have a preference for wallaby. If there is a way to make farming of these tasty marsupials viable, I am for it.

Great thread, interesting responses.

It's strange... all those who hate and berate farmers are not in this thread, and there is less shouting, fewer irrational statements and no personal attacks. Instead, we've had rational discussion and a good dose of pragmatism.

If only it were like this more often.

On an aside. Has anyone ever eaten koala, does is taste good, how is it best cooked?

I don't know DFXK, but after having eaten (taken one bite) a turkey that fed on camphor laurel berries, I would assume the taste of eucalyptus might limit koala meat to a very strong Laksa sauce and hold the lemon grass.

Kangaroo is really good if only lightly cooked (when the juices first run) and with Terriyaki sauce. As for farming, they might be viable with a natural barrier (an island?) to keep them in but the big hurdle is the existing environmental protection measures that have challenged the notion that animals on ones property are the property of the landowner. It would need a complete and unambiguous recognition of the landowners ownership of them, and all other wildlife on their land. And this right of ownership would need to include the right to dispose of as and when they see fit, including the right to completely destock in the same way that cattle or sheep can be completely destocked.

The existing situation where the farmer tries to manage his fodder reserves by adjusting his cattle or sheep herd while the relevant Environment Minister does absolutely nothing to adjust his 'roo herd, even in a serious drought, is REALLY unsustainable. If they are out there and they eat grass then their numbers need to be properly managed. At the moment, the real environmental damage is done by the public's uncontrolled 'roo herd while the farmer cops the blame for the outcome.

I have no doubt that "free market ecology" would produce much better outcomes than we have today but as long as the rural minority is beholden to an urban majority it will not even get a chance to show how good it could be. But thats another issue.

As a former wildlife officer in the south west of WA who issued licenses to allow the culling of kangaroos, can I please bring some grass-roots reality to this issue of kangaroo farming? Anyone who tried to farm kangaroos on the smaller properties described by Ian Mott would have to be plain silly to try it, for all the reasons that Ian has raised plus other reasons. The reality is that kangaroo farming is only seriously proposed for the pastoral regions of Australia where the average property size is maybe 100,000 hectares, where you wouldn't need fences in any way shape or form and where you would quite deliberately be removing cloven hoofed exotic animals such as sheep, cattle or goats and instead be allowing kangaroos to become the harvestable animal species.

The environmental benefits of removing cloven hoofed animals would be huge, as shown by numerous case studies where deteriorating land quality has been reversed in places like the Murchison-Gascoyne region of WA by destocking and allowing our native herbivores - kangaroos - to take over.

Kangaroo farming in this way would allow 90% of the costs discussed by Ian to disappear, thereby improving the economic viability of kangaroo harvesting enormously. As well, if you understand what the term 'ecosystem services' is all about, then it is about time that we urban residents of Australia started paying farmers and pastoralists to better manage the ecosystem services (such as clean water and air, protection of biodiversity, bush tucker, etc) that their properties should be providing to the Australian landscape, i.e to all Australians.

Bernie Masters

Bernie Masters your post has confirmed alot of my thinking all along. The author was approaching 'roo farming from the same perspective as cattle & sheep farming. A different approach which respects the environment such as you suggest makes sense.

We can keep smaller farms for traditional livestock & large areas for the roos (and wallabies).

Also second your suggestion to encourage viable ecosystems. The way ahead is for balance and sustainable practices rather than the exploitative methods used currently.

I would also like to add support to Bernie Masters' comments. We need to look at our ecological problems from a different angle than "business as usual" and see how we can best use our assets.

Whose assets? Within some fairly light regulatory framework I would also support more "ownership" by those on the land. Australia is a heritage for us all, and we have the right to voice comment and concern (yes, even from the city!) but it is those who are actually there and living with the land who need empowerment to care for it.

The "Campfire" initiative in Zimbabwe channelled fees to local villagers for game hunted in their districts. Animals that were previously viewed as a nuisance were thus given economic value and a chance of survival. Such "ownership" made a difference to often impoverished communities.

Previous posts point out the inherent value of natural resources, and it is the general undervaluing of these resources and the best practice care of them that has resulted in much of the environmetal degradation the continent suffers today. If it means that such resources need to be assigned monetary value then let's get on with it, whether it be Roos, water or carbon. If capitalism is the game, let's play it for the benefit of all not just those at the centre of the web.

It is true that properties of 100,000 hectares may avoid the need for fences but how many of them still exist. And what they save in fencing costs they pay in distance from ports, rail and markets.

And there is one other very significant factor that was touched on earlier and that is the lack of a 5000 year breeding program for 'roos. For one of the main benefits of that breeding has been to produce sheep and cattle with a high 'meat-to-bone' ratio.

For example, cattle in their prime will produce a carcass weight that is approximately half of it's live weight. The remainder is blood, head, stomach etc of low value. But there are no such 'beefy' reserves on a 'roo carcass where the meat to bone ratio is much lower. And it could take centuries to breed these attributes into the 'roo herd to the point where they would compare with cattle or sheep. So yes, 'roos have a higher efficiency in converting food to body weight but a higher proportion of that body weight is non-meat.

Furthermore, it is one of the much claimed benefits of 'roo farming, their rapid breeding response to good conditions, that precludes them from additional weight gain. That is, when cattle enjoy good conditions they gain weight but 'roos simply produce more 'roos to exploit the abundant fodder reserves. And that expanded population remains mostly bone and offal, not meat.

Indeed, it is no small irony that the only way kangaroos could become a viable, sustainable farming option would be after extensive genetic manipulation. And given the existing opposition to genetically modified crops, it is hard to see how GM kangaroos, released on any property without a very good fence, would gain much public support. Especially from the green/left for whom private ownership of wildlife is an anathema.

From reading some of the above posts, one would be lead to think that you couldn't run any hoofed animals in Australia without destroying everything. I'd ask for some common sense here, with good management, the doom-and-gloom prophecies of the Watermelons will not come to pass. Rotation of stock on a properly-managed property will avoid any long-term problems.

It's probably better just to shoot roos on demand than try to farm them.

Thank goodness for the informed comment of people like Bernie Masters.

It so happens my family owned a station in the Upper Gascoyne (north-west Western Australia) in the early 1980's. We ran a few sheep and cattle but lived mainly on the proceeds from our 'roo licence which covered a block of some 3 million acres. From memory, we were issued with about 5000 tags per year.

That's one 'roo per square mile of country!

The female red kangaroo, macropus rufus, carries a joey in her pouch and has one at foot. She has another as a cystoblast in the reproductive canal in a state of suspended animation just waiting for rain to bring on the feed. The red 'roo is the most incredible animal, perfectly adapted to living and breeding in one of the driest regions on earth and they survive where the sheep and cattle perish for lack of water or feed.

Red Kangaroos can travel extreme distances following inland rain storms (green feed) whereas sheep can travel about 4 miles from water in summer and cattle about 6 miles. The range of sheep and cattle is entirely limited by access to watering points while that of the kangaroo is not. Sheep need water every day in that climate, cattle every two days and red kangaroos about once a week.

On top of that, as old Jack Absalom very bluntly told the South Australian Governor on one occasion: 'Kangaroos provide the best meat in the world. It is ultra-lean, has less than 0.1% cholesterol, is better than 48% protein... and we feed it to our bloody dogs!'

Kangaroos don't ordinarily overgraze (unless humans have altered the environment so they over breed); they don't cause damage to our highly fragile soils; and they can reproduce at more than twice the rate of domestic animals.

Throw a tail on the barbie and try it!

Kaz

The notion that a 100,000ha property or bigger would not need fences needs a closer look. For this is 1000 square km or a 31km square. So a 'roo that is half way between the middle of the property and the boundary is only 8km from that boundary. And this is only 15 minutes at 32km/hour. This isn't too bad by itself, provided the neighbour is doing exactly the same things at the same time.

With this level of mobility, a neighbour could sell all, or most, his own 'roos when feed is still available and then sit back as stock from all the neighbours drift onto his property and mingle with the remaining herd. And while any identification system may pick them up when they come up for sale, that may not take place for a few years and all their progeny would remain the property of the neighbour who de-stocked. There is a very sound practical basis to the old saying, "good fences make good neighbours".

It is the shorter distances travelled by sheep and cattle and their greater dependence on water points that enables them to be successfully managed on broad acre properties without fences. So while this may be a competitive disadvantage in the wild it is a distinct advantage on a managed farm.

One of the main disadvantages of kangaroos as a farm animal is a lack of all those attributes of sheep and cattle that enhance their ease of management. They don't show up in the growth data but they certainly do show up on the bottom line. These attributes did not appear by chance, they have been bred into them over a few millenia.

So my advice to the 'roo promoters is, it sounds fine in theory but you need to get to work on the selective breeding and come back to me when you have an animal that suits our needs and that our customers here and abroad will buy.

The comments on greenhouse gas emission by livestock already submiited that stand same for this also.No new comment at this momment.

To try and satisfy a couple of concerns about kangaroo farming put forward by Perseus, two responses:
1) in WA, the average size of pastoral properties is about 500,000 hectares. My earlier post stating 100,000 ha was an attempt not to embarass those of you living in the smaller states. :-)
2) kangaroos have been evolving in Australia for some 60 million years (maybe longer). I don't think they need any further genetic improvement in order for pastoralists to successful farm them.

Well Bernie, that million year breeding program was not to produce an animal suited for farming. It is all very well extolling the environmental benefits of 'roos but if they are not suited for the business of farming then they simply will not be farmed.

The big places will be farming Camels long before anyone goes into 'roos. But be my guest. Why not invest you own superannuation in a 'roo farm if you think it is that good. Why not approach the so-called "ethical" investment companies?

Thank you Perseus , My thoughts exactly .

Bernie , mate just for fun let's pretend for a moment that a large market exists , Large enough to consider farming roo .

You send your free range roo into market & get a price that makes supplying them profitable . all good .

Time goes by & demand is increasing , However the price you recieve is decreasing .

Why ? You wonder .

The next truck load leaves your property & you follow it to the saleyards . Just to see how they sell .

At the yards you see your animals all fit & clean , A walk along the other pens pens of roo reveals something .

Farmer P & farmer J must have more feed than me . They must have . You think to yourself .

How else could their roo be so much larger , more muscular & fatter than mine ? You think .

Anyway let's just watch the sale .

Wow the buyers went mad over the other pens of roo , They just kept on bidding , good prices too .

But your free range animals only drew three bids . Much lesser price too .

On the way home you start to think about how to compete with farmer J & farmer P , You'll be out of business soon if you can't .

You think ; maybe I should fence off a section & grow a fodder crop , Yeah good idea I'll do that . Also I might put the best looking buck with the best looking does & see what I get , Yeah that's what I'll do .

..Now this is where the reality of market forces kicks in ..

An excellent point, Jamo. I hadn't thought of the counterveiling need to keep the 'roos out of the paddock so the fodder crop can grow properly and then be progressively grazed. So we are back with the cost of a 'roo proof fence and, more importantly, a multiple strand electric fence (at hideous price) to ensure that the crop is grazed in stages.

In fact, an electric fence won't work because 'roos will usually be in mid-air when they touch it and there will be no jolt. The current won't be able to go to earth. So one of the greatest technological innovations in farming, the humble electric fence, will be useless.

And all the economic and environmental benefits of cell grazing will be lost.

Well, Ive just stumbled across this forum, and I will definately be keeping an eye on it in future. Even the loopy academics have agreed that farming of kangas is impossible without using drugs to pacify them. Kangaroos can't even walk backwards. If anyone on this forum thinks that the broader Australian community will allow our wild kangaroos to be drugged, castrated, branded, genetically altered, hit with hormones, and whatever else farmers now do to cattle and sheep, think again.

It's illegal to herd, constrain or otherwise interfere with wild kangaroo populations, and that situation is unlikely to change. Public opinion wont allow it, the Feds who have the final say wont allow it, nor will the general Australian public eat kangaroo meat anyway. If they would, we wouldnt need to send trimmings, kangaroo offal and crushed bones, and other undesirable bits and pieces overseas to make Russian salami. (Don't buy imported salami!)

I like this forum, it provides us with lots of reasons to stop killing kangaroos, please keep it going!

Pat O'Brien, President, Wildlife Protection Association of Australia Inc.

As president of the Wildlife Protection Society, Paddy has a particular barrow to push. If his assumptions about how kangaroos could be farmed were correct, then the issue would be immediately rejected by most people. However, no one that I'm aware of is accepting his assumptions as being credible: namely, we're not talking about 'farming' kangaroos as if they were just another domesticated farm animal. Instead, kangaroo farming will be a controlled and well managed harvesting of wild populations of kangaroos, just as happens at present to the several million roos that are shot on both pastoral and agricultural land every year. The differences between Paddy's preconceptions and my own are that, if kangaroos were harvested for human consumption and if they replaced cloven-hoofed animals on our farms and stations, then we would have a more sustainable rural industry with economic, social and environmental benefits. On the assumption that Paddy and his group are philosophically opposed to kangaroo harvesting, I look forward to seeing whether his mind-set about 'farming' of this abundant animal is capable of changing.

Currently kanga meat is in demand overseas because its cheap, much cheaper than beef or lamb. And the quotas cant keep up with the demand for cheap processing meat, nor can the numbers of kangas. A farming operation with increased costs would need to recover much higher prices to be viable. Also there is the matter of demand.

Our overseas markets like Japan, the Middle East and Europe mostly want beef or mutton, not kangaroo meat. If we didnt supply beef or mutton to them, some body else would. We can never replace those products with kanga meat, because our major markets (the ones with the dollars) simply dont want it. There are other financial constraints too.

The argument about soft and hard hoofed animals doesnt stack up either. There are many Aussie farmers who do not overgraze, do not clear all their land, and who even replant trees on previously cleared land. They rotate beef and grain crops, set up water contouring, with water troughs away from creeks, and do okay.

Erosion and salinity are caused by too many hardhoofed animals, on too much marginal land. Its very obvious that there are many areas of Australia that should never have been "farmed."

As someone who has sat on the Queensland Kangaroo Management Advisory Committere for 10 years, I also dispute the idea that the Commercial kill Industry is well managed. It's not!

Please keep the comments coming, if you think farming kangas is a good idea, please let us know why! Cheers, Paddy

Dear Paddy,
Point # 1 - my idea of kangaroo farming is totally different than your concept of what the term means. Since roos are incapable of being doemsticated like sheep or cattle, roo farming to me means harvesting wild kangaroos from the 50% of inland Australia that is currently grazed as pastoral properties, i.e., not on sown pastures but on native vegetation.
Point # 2 - let the markets decide whether roo meat can be a sizeable player on the world stage. History has shown how national economies that attempt to control markets have failed, whereas free market economies have prospered. If the rest of the world doesn't want roo meat, fine, the industry will collapse, but we shouldn't put up the barricades to a roo meat industry just because you say that overseas markets don't want roo meat.
Point # 3 - salinity in WA is 99% caused by the clearing of deep-rooted native vegetation, not by too many cloven-hoofed animals which came along later. In many parts of WA, revegetation will reverse the salt problem, but there's only one animal which can eat native vegetation and produce saleable meat and hides: kangaroos.
Point # 4 - I'm a former wildlife officer in WA and the commercial kill industry is very well managed in this state. If you have problems in Queensland, I suggest you fix those problems rather than pretend that roos aren't in plague proportions and causing significant damage for farmers in many parts of Australia.

Man is omnivorous animal.If the meat sells,it also can play an economic role.Ofcourse the animal should not be in extinct list.Biodiversity and attracting zoo animal worldwide should be maintained with care.

Bernie, I am very familiar with the 'management' processes of the WA commercial kill. The WA commercial kangaroo kill is not well-managed. In the Court of Adminstrative Appeals Tribunal in 2004 we discovered under crossexamination that WA overshot their quota by something like 15000 animals in 2003, hardly good management. SA had similar overshoot. It's probably still happening, if its not, its because they cant find the animals, not because its managed any better.
In 2004 permits were issued by CALM to commercially shoot kangaroos on the Yanchep Golf Club. I was asked to assist local residents to stop the shoot, and flew to WA to help them. The shoot was stopped.
It was found that the Permit was issued by a Senior Ranger that had a relationship with the shooter. The same Ranger has since been investigated by the WA CCC and has been found to be heavily involved in wildlife trafficking, and is to be charged.
As an ex-ranger you would surely be aware that there is no funding to adequately manage anything, conservation management goes by the board, as bureaucrat numbers increase, and as ranger numbers are reduced. Those Rangers left are instructed to clean up after tourists.
I doubt that anyone really believes that any government department is capable of managing anything properly, be it health, environment or anything else. There is also the issues of sustainability, and the humane treatment of joeys, which has yet to be adequately addressed by any management Plan.
Cutting the heads off inpouch joeys, or bashing them with an iron bar as recommended in the COP, is hardly an acceptable way to euthanise young animals, and 'wild farming' would not resolve this matter either. Australia is the only country in the world which commercially kills wildlife mothers with young, then kills the young.
Anyway kangaroo farming is simply not going to happen. As we move more towards the billions of dollars of income wildlife tourism is bringing, the commercial values of live kangaroos are far higher than that of dead ones. Cheers, Paddy

To Paddy,
It is very cruelty to animals.Is there no law for prevention of cruelty for wild life?

Really interesting reading Paddy, Bernie Masters, Perseus and Kaz. I feel that I know all of them quite well. I would stick my 2c in but I find the idea of making a buck out of kangaroos or any other 'crop' or windfall highlights the inherent absurdity of our economic system.

The biggest problem about farming or hunting anything in Australia is that we are attempting to satisfy our own ridiculously outsized local population plus something like 300 million overseas consumers by intensively cultivating and harvesting anything the earth produces.

Does anyone on this forum seriously think that we can go on doing this? Every natural resource and the interdependency of our bio-ecology is compromised by this imperative to make a profit from every activity we engage in.

The earth is like the goose that laid the golden egg. The hunters and farmers who go after the goose and its eggs are in the difficult position of being coerced and induced by the crazy free market to the point where they are eventually going to club that goose to death, just to be able to pay for that next tank of petrol for the new harvester.

I've just come across an article by one of the world's experts on Kangaroos - Hugh Tyndale-Biscoe - published in the July 2005 edition of Australasian Science. While he doesn't come out and say that kangaroo harvesting is economically sustainable, he is very strong in his comments against over-grazing by sheep in pastoral regions.

Entitled "Kangaroos and Sheep: The Unequal Contest", the article should be read by anyone who has a genuine interest in this issue of kangaroo farming and sustainablity.

If anyone wants to email me at bmasters@iinet.net.au, I'll send them a scanned copy of the article.

I would like to agree with the person who talks about turning our kangaroos into a tourism event instead of a meal.

If they must eat or farm something go along the lines of a delicacy try rats and they breed much quicker than kangaroos.

Every time this country goes in for farming animals such and the deer, the emu etc it always seems to have back fired on the animals as well as the people involved. You can fit much more rats on your property than kangaroos and international visitors wont think what barbaric people live in this country.

We should be appreciating our wildlife not cooking it.