“WE well and truly dodged a bullet this year,” is the assessment of woolgrower Will Carrington-Jones, Warringa, Kojonup, of the current season.
“It was a very, very dry start and we basically had only 55 millimetres of rain for all of March, April, May, June and half way through July,” Mr Carrington-Jones said during a recent visit to the Western Wool Centre (WWC).
He was there with his shearing contractor of 12 years, Louanna Jury of Jury Shearing, Kojonup, to see 169 bales from an early September shearing of ewes and hoggets sold.
Mr Carrington-Jones’ wethers were shorn in early July and lambs were being shorn last week.
He admitted to having an abundant supply of oats on farm – initially the result of some bad luck which ultimately turned out to be good luck – that helped him get his flock through to September and some green feed.
“We were lucky, due to delivery difficulties with a particular variety of oats we were able to store probably one and a half times what we would normally store and that turned into a Godsend because the feeding through has been a lot longer than what we normally do,” Mr Carrington-Jones said.
“We still normally feed through – part of our lambing program is to feed lambs on ewes, that way the winter weaning lambs already understand the feeding regime, so it makes it terribly easy to get young sheep through after that.
“We would normally keep feeding through well and truly into August as a general plan, but it became a matter of necessity this year.
“(Then) I picked up a completely unforecast and unexpected 20-odd millimetres of rain which turned the season around and it’s been very soft ever since – I think we’ve only had two frosts and they were minor.
“We were able to keep on with pasture fertiliser and stuff like that, that has made a big difference to the year, so we’ve ended up with good pasture feed now and adequate water to get through (summer).
“Pasture wise, I think we’re now looking as good as we did last year and all the gaps have filled in, but whether the quality is there or not we don’t know, and we won’t know until we get to February just how things have panned out.”
Mr Carrington-Jones said the dry but mild autumn and winter benefitted his lambing program which was close to a 100pc rate this year.
“We drop in April-May and mules at the beginning of June and it’s one of those seasons that suited that lambing program,” he said.
“We normally mate about 4500 ewes (but) this year, like everybody else, we’ll probably mate about 5000 – of those probably 4300 to Merinos and somewhere between 500 and 700 to White Suffolks.”
Although his hay cut was “probably 200 tonnes down on what I’d like to have at the moment”, Mr Carrington-Jones said he was confident he could store enough feed to get through a repeat season next year if he had to.
“We’ll fill all the silos up with grain again and have one and a half year’s worth just to be on the safe side,” he said.
Almost half of the 2500 hectare property was cropped with canola and wheat this year – a plan to include lupins was abandoned because of the late break.
“We’re swathing canola at the moment but haven’t done any harvest so we won’t know how much (we’ve got) until we get the header in,” Mr Carrington-Jones said.
“There’s certainly some canola there and if we get a tonne or better (per hectare) I’ll be happy because of the lateness of the season.
“There are some paddocks there that look better than that and the wheat looks very good but it’s still extremely green.
“I couldn’t see us starting (on wheat) before about December 10, but hopefully we’ll be finished by Christmas and then turn the sheep out on the stubbles – their real value, apart from feed, is in managing sheep health.
“We’ll drench on stubbles, the worm situation this year has been particularly difficult, we’ve had to do more drenching this year than we’ve had to in probably the past five to 10 years,” he said.
Mr Carrington-Jones chose a record-setting day of trade at the WWC to sell his average 18.7 micron, 67.5pc yield wool, the result of Wallinar and Barloo bloodlines in his breeding flock.
He was very pleased with the sale result, particularly as staple lengths generally beyond 100 millimetres and out to 111mm on one line did not appear to meet buyer resistance or attract a significant price penalty.
His average sweep-the-floor price was 1341 cents per kilogram greasy.
Two lines of 17.5 and 17.7 micron, low 0.7 vegetable matter fleece with yields of 71.3 and 70.7pc sold to a top of 1654 and 1621c/kg.
“It’s a good day to be a woolgrower,” Mr Carrington-Jones said.
“As long as we can hold the market where it is, it is going to put a lot of backbone into the sheep industry.”