New Zealand has no lamb survivability benchmark, leaving farmers without a measure of what counts as doing well. Kellogg report author Julia Hardwick-Smith says her research found 84% of farmers see lamb wastage as a serious issue and 28% say it hurts their mental health.

She found about half are interested in artificial rearing and a quarter in indoor lambing.

“Where there is life, there is some death, but we want to try and minimise that,” she says.

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