East Loddon Merino Stud strive for high quality wool, achieved through a focus to detail.
Our breeding aims and direction have been developed by stepping back and evaluating what makes a profitable merino enterprise.
Wool
For many years we have been implementing the SRS breeding system developed by Dr. Jim Watts. SRS wools are soft, white, deep crimping free growing produced from a thin wrinkle free skin.
A characteristic of these wools is the exceptional fibre length. Currently we are shearing all stud and flock sheep every six months.
Growth Rate
A strong focus has been selecting for fast maturing animals. This gives us the ability to wean at an earlier stage giving ewes a greater chance to conceive in the following joining. Wether lambs reach saleable weights quicker with less inputs required.
A large majority of our sires are currently trait leaders for yearling weight (YWT). See our sire page.
Muscle & Fat - Doing Ability
East Loddon Merino Stud selects heavily on (YEMD) and fat (YFAT) traits. A higher level of genetic fat and muscle enables a sheep to better maintain condition score with fewer inputs. This results in greater lamb survival and higher weaning outcomes.
Fat depth allows for Ewes and progeny to cope with fluctuating environments due to a bigger fuel tank of stored fat. Industry research has demonstrated an increase in lambing percentage with data showing figures of 6 more lambs per 100 ewe for 1mm of yearling eye muscle depth.
Wrinkle Free
Skin wrinkle has been eliminated using the SRS breeding system. Wrinkle free sheep are faster growing, more fertile, easier to shear, withstand wet conditions and are less susceptible to flystrike than traditional Merinos. All these benefits result in a flock of sheep that requires less intervention, lowering the cost of production and increasing sheep enterprise income.
HITTING THE TARGET
The stud selects traits with a combination of extremely strict visual assessment and the use of Australian Sheep Breeding Values (ASBV’s). ASBVs are only as valuable as the quality of data collected on farm.
We take a lot of care ensuring the data we collect is best practice thus generating highly reliable breeding values for the most informed breeding decisions for us and our clients.