Jim Gough graduated from University of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Agricultural Science in 1962. After he graduated, Jim bought his original Corriedale stud. He purchased his Hereford stud in 1969 and has been performance recording ever since.
Throughout his career, Jim has been active in breed improvement, both for his Corriedale flock and his Hereford herd.
An activist in the early days of his career, Jim has always supported show societies as a mechanism for quality control. However, his endeavours have lead to the development of performance classes in the show society for both cattle and sheep. Over time, Jim became a constructive critic, leading to improvements in judging at the Melbourne Show, which incorporate performance classes, as well as subjective assessments.
Jim was a very early adopter of the National Beef Recording Scheme, and has been involved since before 1976. He was a foundation member of the Hereford sire reference scheme, which allowed faster implementation of Group Breedplan. At the time, this was very innovative, involving sacrifice by breeders (who needed to use link sires) and eased the implementation of Group Breedplan.
He was a founding member of the "Performance Power" group - a group marketing scheme, where four producers started marketing themselves under the Performance Power banner. The aim of the exercise was to create a market niche for performance recorded bulls. It also involved certification of bulls, giving a vendor declaration of the product for sale, and indicating that no treatments, such as feet paring had been undertaken.
Jim was behind the establishment of the Western District Corriedale breeders group and the Western District Hereford group. Both of these groups have been instrumental in achieving change for their respective breeds.
Whenever new technology is available, Jim has always tried to be at the front and "jumped in" - whether it be the utilisation of scanning results, or new embryo technologies.
Jim has been of great benefit to the Victorian Department of Agriculture, always offering assistance with experimental trials to develop new technologies, or to trial industry folklore.
Jim has applied the technologies available for his beef herd to his Corriedales, with the same sense of enthusiasm. He was also a major contributor to the first across-flock recording system for the Corriedale breed. Jim was the first Corriedale breeder to use fleece measurements for his ram selection, and offer pre-sale testing of wool to his clients.
Jim's major concern has always been to describe the quality of his product (whether it is stud animals, or product) for his clients' benefit. This has been to ensure his clients are purchasing a product they want.