BEN Heinrich sits with his sheep right until slaughter because animal welfare is a high priority for his farming operation.
"I could drop them off there Sunday night but just another one percenter, where I load them up Monday morning and run them down, so they're not sitting around for too long wondering what's going on," he said.
He and his wife Kerry, who run 1800 commercial sheep at Black Springs, can trace exactly where each sheep has been for its entire lifespan.
That story is sold with every carcase under their brand Wunderbar Lamb.
In 2005 the Heinrichs converted their flock of Merinos to various shedding sheep before they settled on Australian Whites in 2014, which ticked all the boxes as a non-seasonal breeder.
They decided they needed to diversify their market as they were finding the sheep were less attractive to buyers at a typical livestock sale.
"The whole reason I started the paddock to plate was when we first got into shedding sheep, I didn't feel we were getting the rewards," Mr Heinrich said.
"Especially selling at the markets, I thought we were getting a bit penalised because they look different next to the nice woolly crossbred lambs, everyone's used to and they were just visually not what buyers wanted.
"Initially, we were selling everything over the hooks, where we were just getting paid for the meat.
"One day I thought, I'll see if I can try selling it myself and actually have some control, where I set the price and know what we are going to get. I soon learnt you need constant supply once you've got a product people like. They don't want to wait six months for the next batch to come in."
On 800 hectares, the family run about seven mobs.
"But they each follow the exact same cycle, just at different times, to keep up with supply," he said.
Mr Heinrich said the ram would go in with a mob of roughly 150 ewes.
"They go in for strictly five weeks," he said.
RELATED:
"Around 50 to 60 days, once the ram goes in, we pregnancy scan and pull out any dries, which then go into the next mob about to be serviced by the ram.
"Once the ewe lambed, we wean at 12 weeks, give the ewe one or two weeks, depending on the seasonal conditions, and then repeat the cycle, all while the other mobs have been serviced."
Mrs Heinrich said she used spreadsheets to keep track of every mob.
The family market their lamb as free to roam and graze under mostly natural conditions with no feedlots, docking, tailing, mulesing or shearing - making them Australia's first Humane Choice Certified lamb producer.
"Usually our ewe lambs will go back into a breeding mob and will be serviced by the ram," Mr Heinrich said.
"At marking they get the Glanvac six-in-one, plus a B12, then at weaning they get a weaner guard and a multi-mineral.
"With the castration of the wethers, we inject them with lignocaine - an aesthetic - before putting the ring on and we give them an electronic identification tag."
Mr Heinrich said they grow the paddock lambs out to about 45-50 kilograms liveweight, which was usually reached at seven to eight-months-old.
"We work on dressing out at roughly 50 per cent, as we are selling direct to the butcher so we want to maintain that little bit of back cover," he said.
"We will weigh them once a month and pull out any which are in the optimal weight range, which we pen closer to the house.
"Every Sunday night I pick 10 to 12 from that pen, which I send to Kapunda early Monday morning, down to Menzel's Meats, and I sit with them right to the end so they're not penned up wondering what is going on.
"They go from there to either Cooper's Butchers at Burra or Meat at the Market in Adelaide Central Market.
"I sell the whole carcase and let the butchers cut it up how they need - it is the simplest process."
Their meat is served at local Mid North restaurants and is also available at independent grocers.
"Casey portions our lamb at his Burra store, sells it direct to locals and distributes whole and part carcases to chefs in the local area," Mr Heinrich said.
"It's pretty gratifying seeing your product and brand you have worked so passionately for, on a menu - we are proud."
Mr Heinrich said his short term goal was to sell 15 lambs a week.
"The long-term goal is to eventually have a true paddock-to-plate restaurant experience somewhere on the property," he said.
Meat at the Market owner Kim Malandain said 90pc of their meat offering was paddock to plate.
"That's what I suppose stands out a little bit, to your average butcher shop, that we do try to support more sustainable farming," she said. "People are more aware of where their food is coming from, the locality and then I suppose the welfare of the animal as well."
She said the ability to get on-farm and see the welfare of the animals made their product unique.
"It's extremely important for us to be able to have that connection with the farmers," she said.
Livestock SA chief executive officer Travis Tobin said paddock to plate would not suit every farming system.
"If you've got a good sustainability story to tell, you can obviously control that narrative right through to the customer, whereas if you're selling into general markets, those retail facing entities will be the ones selling the sustainability story, not you," Mr Tobin said.
- This is the sixth instalment in Stock Journal's paddock-to-plate monthly series.