Published 12 January 2011

Farming Skippy

From Jan Horton

The reason that marsupials such as kangaroos are not farmed in Australia (9 October 2010, p 42) is not because it is too difficult, but rather that in various states it is either illegal to do so or discouraged. In the past, considerable work has been done on farming marsupials.

I was familiar with a project to domesticate the eastern wallaroo, or euro (Macropus robustus), which used sheep netting fences with an electric fence on the top and bottom. The initial stock, having been obtained from sources including zoos and those hand reared as pets, were quiet to start with. Joeys born to this stock tended to be quiet too, but any that jumped the fence were shot for being too bouncy.

The marsupials were handled like deer, in a darkened shed under red lights. Although euros are not as large as “big red” kangaroos, breeding males had to be treated with respect in the breeding season. Excess males were castrated to prevent fights.

Conveniently, the animals’ pouch reflex means that when they have a bag put over their head, they curl up and relax, and can be transported to the abattoir with little stress.


The domestication project was working well when a ban was introduced. All the specially bred stock were subsequently sent to slaughter.

We have the perfect animal to provide healthy meat with less damage to the environment, but we aren’t allowed to farm them. Instead, they are expensively fenced out of farmland, and shot or poisoned so we can run sheep and cattle.

From Lionel Delaney

I disagree with the arguments put forward by Dror Ben Ami against shooting and eating kangaroos (20 November 2010, p 30).

Animals that lower a farmer’s profitability are treated as pests and farmers try to reduce their numbers to make a living from their land. Make the animal valuable to the people who have to pay for its existence and they will protect it or, in the kangaroo’s case, conserve it.

Kangaroos make good, tasty meat. To shoot them and let them rot is crazy, but that is the present system for grey kangaroos.

Rylstone, New South Wales, Australia

From Bernie Masters

Kangaroo numbers are much higher now than at the time of European settlement in 1788. Provision of pasture and watering points by farmers for their livestock has allowed the total population of kangaroos to increase, albeit with fluctuations due to seasonal climate variability.

Kangaroos used to be rarer, making them a sought-after source of food for Indigenous Australian people. One woman I spoke to recalled seeing her first kangaroo in the Tuart Forest National Park, Western Australia, on her 21st birthday in 1965. Now, between 500 and 1000 kangaroos are shot in this park each year following a population explosion.

Kangaroo grazing is listed as a threat to local biodiversity under federal government laws in some parts of Australia because it has such a detrimental effect on native bushland.

Capel, Western Australia

Launceston, Tasmania, Australia