Kerin Poll Merino stud sets new record for rams
Kate and Nigel Kerin have plenty of reasons to smile. Their Merino stud in NSW set an Australian record on Monday when their sale, in Nigel’s words, “went off”. Here is what Kerin Poll at Yeoval averaged for 500 rams offered and sold.
A NSW Merino stud has set an Australian record today, selling $1.55 million worth of rams on-property at Yeoval.
The record-breaking result is the highest value achieved for a single vendor on-property Merino ram sale.
Kerin Poll Merino, a stud in its 11th year, averaged $3096 for 500 offered and sold, a lift of $592 on last year’s 450 rams.
The top price was $10,000, paid by the Wykes family at Euchareena, NSW. In all they bought 26, averaging just over $4000.
Kerin Poll principal Nigel Kerin said the sale “went off” and despite the wool market’s current woes, he said growers were “just so bloody happy to have grass under their feet again”.
He attributed the stud’s rapid success in the past decade to its focus on profitable sheep.
“It is because someone has finally listened to what growers want, these Merinos will compete against all other land use enterprises.”
Mr Kerin said the success of his Merinos and the numbers he could sell was due to the focus on fertility and fleece weight.
“We have post weaning weight and fleece weight data like no other stud in Australia,” he said.
“Across our 500 sale rams we average seven for post weaning weight which is twice the industry average, nine for yearling weight and 24.5 for fleece weight.
“When we decided to build a stud the only way to do it was to select about seven of the sires with the best data in Australia and AI-ed 3500 ewes each year; we did the science.”
Mr Kerin said his Merinos “look like a traditional Merino” but “it is the data that makes them different”.
The sale rams averaged 19.5 micron and the flock’s ewe standard reference weight was 73kg.
“They are plain bodied, non-mulesed,” he said.
Buyers came from high rainfall areas across five states.
Mr Kerin said the wool market’s fall was a “hiccup” and would “bounce back to levels not seen before when a vaccine is discovered for COVID-19”.
Repeat buyer Tim Oldfield from Enngonia, NSW, bought 52 rams while Paul and Nic Goode from Culcairn, NSW, paid to $9000 for rams to add to their flock in southern NSW.
Nic Goode said they were looking for rams which could add weight and wool to their flock.
“We looked for rams which had high post weaning weight and greasy fleece weight figures,” he said.
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