Question to Aussies, Why don't you ranch Kangaroos?

It is game... and yes it has a recognizably gamey taste. It also becomes leathery if you overcook it.
 
But since there's less fat in it than beef or lamb, it takes less time to cook and most people overcook it.

It's also similar to deer.

I think that overcooked roo meat is how I developed my aversion for it.

Edit: Why isn't 'roo' in Firefox's Australian English dictionary?
 
Arwon said:
There's a kangaroo industry, but they're hunted, not farmed. They're used for food and leather - both human food and dog food.

Of the 25 million kangaroos in Australia, there's a quota of roughly 20% that can be harvested each year. There's actually quite a sophisticated data collection operation aimed at tracking their numbers and movements in specific regions, apparently.

Why aren't they fenced or farmed? This is easy. You don't fence wild game in. Fences aren't just about physically containing animals, they're also about property. People don't need to own or feed kangaroos, it doesn't make sense to farm them when they can be hunted for free. Fences are for keeping your animals on your property and keeping other people's animals off your grass. Land ownership and geography just mean that there's no point to fencing them in or owning them or trying to domesticate them.

The species of kangaroos that get hunted live the arid grasslands where not many people live. These are huge, sparse areas, where the land is either state and national parks, Crown land (government land) or VAST properties for cattle farming. We're talking about areas the size of European countries with a few hundred people living there. In none of these situations is it necessary or feasible to fence the 'roos in.
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By fencing them in, basically means that they would be turned from Game meat to pasture meat, like sheep and goats.

and for the last paragraph, do you mean the area that experiences the more extreme droughts every 5 or so years? If it is that, i can see why the area is so sparsely populated.

Also could someone tell me the proper term for raising Kangaroo's? Is it pasture? Ranch? herd? or something completely different?
 
I regularly see recommendations for Australia to start using more kangaroo meat, from ecologists. There are many reasons.
1) ecologically much more friently
2) they are not the pests that people think they are. They were blamed for things they didn't do.
3) they're more distant from us than cows are (evolutionarily), which means that they have fewer common parasites.

The problem is that they're wild and would need to be hunted. I don't know the ecological friendliness of using an ATV to collect a few hundred pounds of meat at a time. You can't herd them to a slaughterhouse like you can with cattle.

There's also a call to start really hunting the wild camels in the north

Put kangaroos, camels on Australian eco-menu: scientists

In the case of kangaroos, environmentalists say the national animal should become a dietary staple in place of cattle and sheep as part of the fight against global warming.

The farm animals make a major contribution to Australia's greenhouse gas emissions simply by belching and farting, while kangaroos emit negligible amounts of dangerous methane gas.

In other words, there should be more kangaroos and fewer farm animals.
.....

In the case of camels, scientists say eating the imported animals would be one way of reducing the million-strong feral herd -- one of the largest on earth -- running amok in the fragile ecosystems of the outback.
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TheLastOne36 said:
By fencing them in, basically means that they would be turned from Game meat to pasture meat, like sheep and goats.

and for the last paragraph, do you mean the area that experiences the more extreme droughts every 5 or so years? If it is that, i can see why the area is so sparsely populated.

Also could someone tell me the proper term for raising Kangaroo's? Is it pasture? Ranch? herd? or something completely different?
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Harvesting or hunting.

What I mean is most of Australia is arid and nobody lives there. There's the deserts obviously, but even the shrubland and grassland areas are just not very populated. The land usage is very very low-intensity. Any mental images you have of the land which are based on Europe or North America just don't apply. Masada's post can tell you more.
 
El_Machinae said:
I regularly see recommendations for Australia to start using more kangaroo meat, from ecologists. There are many reasons.
1) ecologically much more friently
2) they are not the pests that people think they are. They were blamed for things they didn't do.
3) they're more distant from us than cows are (evolutionarily), which means that they have fewer common parasites.

The problem is that they're wild and would need to be hunted. I don't know the ecological friendliness of using an ATV to collect a few hundred pounds of meat at a time. You can't herd them to a slaughterhouse like you can with cattle.

There's also a call to start really hunting the wild camels in the north

Put kangaroos, camels on Australian eco-menu: scientists
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There are camels in australia?

I have learned something today.
 
the oldest member of parliament owns kangaroos, and once one escaped.

laughs were had. So yeah, i learned another thing today, the USA banned kangaroo meat for an ******** reason.

Hilarious.
 
TheLastOne36 said:
There are camels in australia?

I have learned something today.
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Last place they live wild, isn't it? (excluding those ones in Mongolia, a different type of camel)
 
I'm guessing Camels were introduced yes? I don't think they got their on their own.

What is their environmental impact on Australian soils? is it as bad as Sheep/Cattle or better?

Also how big is the Camel industry? I can see Camel milk and meat making Camels a very productive farm animal.
 
TheLastOne36 said:
I'm guessing Camels were introduced yes? I don't think they got their on their own.

What is their environmental impact on Australian soils? is it as bad as Sheep/Cattle or better?

Also how big is the Camel industry? I can see Camel milk and meat making Camels a very productive farm animal.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_feral_camel
Wasn't there a herd of them in the American Southwest for awhile as well?
 
TheLastOne36 said:
Also how big is the Camel industry? I can see Camel milk and meat making Camels a very productive farm animal.
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Things against Camels:

1. They destroy fences;
2. They require alot of maintenance compared to cattle to extract the milk on a meaningful scale;
3. They are only marginally profitable;
4. We don't have Bedouins (read: Desert dwelling people), to maintain constant care and handle the milking of camels (we could import Palestinians... and give them a homeland but I don't see that happening giving that we would trade them a 'desert' for a real desert);
5. We already shoot tens of thousands of the things a year, there is a market, but it is nowhere near big enough to put a serious dent in Camel numbers, the aforementioned Kangaroo related harvesting issues apply (only much much worse).

TheLastOne36 said:
What is their environmental impact on Australian soils? is it as bad as Sheep/Cattle or better?
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Camels do not compete with sheep on a meaningful level, the areas where Camels predominate are cattle areas in Central Australia which are to dry for sheep (ref: Goyder Line). They are worse than cattle in a wide variety of ways:

1. Camels per animal consume the fodder of 2 cattle (Brahmans for the most part);
2. They consume vast amounts of water;
3. They don't just eat, they rip up the whole plant, eat the roots, rip the bark from trees and generally kill everything they 'eat';
4. Their hooves cause major degradation of the land vs cattle;
5. They also access areas which Cattle cannot and tend to damage the top of escarpments.

Your also missing the real menace in much of Australia, the one for which you cannot shoot out, poison, or generally reduce in a meaningful way Donkeys!
 
Donkeys are awesome. A more stubborn animal does not exist.

There's a camel farm just outside of my hometown. The guy caught the camels in the wild and transported them to Goulburn, which is a relatively arid area. Shortly afterwards Goulburn experienced its heaviest rainstorm in more than a decade. The camels went frigging nuts! They escaped, ran down the highway in a herd, blocking traffic in both directions - this is about the second or third busiest highway in Australia mind you - until they reached a nearby petrol station, the shelter of which they huddled in for hours. It was possibly the funniest news I've ever heard in my life.

So camels are farmed, and so are kangaroos, but not in great numbers. Camels are really hard to farm - in case my story didn't tell you that - and kangaroos aren't suited for it. But we should probably increase the instances of both.
 
Ok, since i got the attention of some Australians, is it true that the Australian Govorner General has the power to 'fire' the Australian Prime Minister?
 
As the executive branch, just like a king or queen in a constitutional monarchy, she has the power to appoint and remove ministers, dissolve parliament, and call elections. What she actually does is quite limited by convention and unwritten laws - it's a non-political, ceremonial role sitting theoretically above politics and governed by centuries of Westminister parliamentary tradition. The precise powers of the G-G are not codified, the references to them in the Constitution are not very specific.

A dismissal has happened once, in probably the single most controversial and divisive incident in Australian political history. Theoretically, the PM can also dismiss the Governor General. This is because the G-G serves at the pleasure of the Queen, who is essentially bound to follow parliament's advice (ie, the PM's) in appointing and removing the G-G. The Governor General is therefore seen rightly as chosen and appointed by the Prime Minister.

What would occur if they both tried to do so (ie, the G-G dismisses the PM and the PM reacts by advising the Queen to remove the G-G) would be a major constitutional crisis, potentially unresolvable. It's a serious flaw in the system. There's a school of thought which holds that the crisis in 1975 could have easily turned violent if the two major players didn't remain so committed to the customs and practises of our political system (ie, accepting the G-G's decision and the subsequent election), escalating into a contest of who could command the loyalty of the police or army to enforce their interpretation of events on the other.

It's not an ideal system, I'm a republican and want it changed, but it's less stupid and crazy than it sounds...
 
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