Sheep farmed extensively on rangeland face distinct welfare challenges from those in intensive systems, including predation, extreme weather, difficult terrain, and limited veterinary access.
Extensive rangeland sheep farming presents welfare challenges that are fundamentally different from intensive confinement systems. Animals are more free to express natural behaviour but are simultaneously less monitored, meaning welfare problems including injury, parasitism, flystrike, and disease progression further before being identified and treated. The welfare calculus in extensive systems requires accepting that some mortality from predation, weather, and untreated illness is inevitable when individual monitoring is impractical at scale. The most important welfare interventions in extensive systems are those that address the highest-frequency and most severe problems: flystrike prevention and management, water and shade access during extreme weather, predator management that minimises both livestock and predator welfare costs, and mustering practices that minimise acute stress.