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The past 12 months can only be described as "testing" but Andrew and Jodie Green have come out the other side grateful that they remained committed to maintaining their entire poll merino flock through the drought and still have 6,000 breeding ewes on hand.
The couple always maintain that the true value of their poll merino flock is in the 5,500 commercial ewe flock who cut on average just over seven kilograms of wool per head per annum and wean 120% of lambs.
With this in mind the growth will continue with plans to build the ewe flock to 7,500 ewes in the next two years.
The capacity of their resources to manage the growth is possible due to the establishment of their confinement feeding area at the end of 2018, which was built out of necessity to feed their wether lambs and allow the bare land to recover as 85% of their breeding sheep were away on agistment over the disastrously hot summer.
The 2018 Aloeburn-bred wether lambs were sold by an average age of 10 months with gross proceeds $213.94/head, including wool.
With a sale of Aloeburn bred CFA ewes for $235/head, Aloeburn Poll Merinos firmly believe that their goal to produce a truly dual purpose sheep suited to the Australian climate and environment is on the right track.
Aloeburn Poll Merinos third annual on farm ram sale will be held on Monday September 23.
The stud was started by Andrew's father, Roger, in the 1970s.
It started with breeding dual purpose sheep and moved to the SRS breeding principals in the 1990s.
Andrew and wife Jodie took over the breeding operation in 2012 and immediately adopted the use of ASBVs to record and measure the genetic progress of their sheep.
Andrew has a wealth of experience in managing mixed farming operations and understands the need to adapt to different environments, while using subjective observations and objective measurements to fit the SRS production principles to a producer and their environment.