Wool centre visit pays off for Duncan

Mr Glasfurd sold 12 lines of wool ranging from 21 micron to 27.5 micron to a top of 954 cents per kilogram greasy for the finer fleece and across a price spread of 230c/kg down to the 26-micron fleece.

He also sold another 13 bales of Merino hogget fleece for 1010c/kg.

"The crossbred wool went above the estimate and was probably for a bit more than we were expecting," said Mr Glasfurd, 27, who farms on Warruga with his parents Ray and Rose.

The Glasfurds, a long established name in the Cataby area, run a large sheep enterprise and the crossbreds - first cross Merino ewes with Border Leicester-Merino cross rams - have comprised up to 40 per cent of it.

The wool sold last week was from a June shearing of their crossbred breeding flock.

"The crossbred (wool) market can sometimes be a bit more volatile than the pure Merino market so you don't always know what to expect, but we were pretty happy with those prices," Mr Glasfurd said.

"They were some of the best we've ever got for our crossbred wool.

"We're adding a bit more Merino to get the wool towards the finer end of the spread, but basically we just look for big-framed rams that will produce good dual-purpose sheep - good meat with plenty of wool.

"We're not after the fine wool, but we do go for the big cut and the crossbreds produce better fat lambs."

The rest of the Warruga Merino clip was sold earlier in the year and also returned good prices, Mr Glasfurd said.

"For ease of management reasons - not having lambs to deal with for one - we're transitioning from a June/July shearing to a March shearing so our Merino wool was from a short shearing this year.

"The crossbred wool was from a 12-month shearing and was longer," he said.

Mr Glasfurd is in his fifth year back on the farm and shares the operational responsibilities with his father.

He has a commerce degree, majoring in accountancy and finance, from the University of WA and worked as an accountant with RSM Bird Cameron in Perth for three years before the farm called him back.

"Coming back here was what I always wanted to do, but I wanted the experience of working for somebody else first," he said.

"I knew the longer I spent in Perth the harder it would be to come back."

While sheep are the major enterprise, the family also has good-looking wheat, canola, barley, lupins and oat crops planted over about 1100 hectares.

"A lot of the country up here is not really suited to cropping, it's too wet," Mr Glasfurd said.

"But I think sheep and cropping is a good mix.

"When I'm in the header towards the end of harvest I can't wait to get out of it and back to the sheep, but when we're drenching sheep, I'm looking for the last one so I can get back on the tractor," he said.

Kevin McLean, Bankia Downs, Coomberdale, and South African woolgrower Frank Ekron visited Primaries of WA's wool store, the Australian Wool Testing Authority and the WWC last week with Mr Glasfurd.

Mr McLean sold 11 bales of Merino hoggets wool, averaging 17.9 microns, for 954c/kg and was very pleased with the price in a market that had started to sag and penalise finer wools like Mr McLean's.

He said his hoggets were shorn early July after eight months, before being trucked out and sold at $105 a head.

Mr Ekron, who has been visiting his brother Quentin in Moora and returns home this week, said he was very interested to see how wool was tested and sold in Australia.

"The prices are much the same but I have to do things a bit differently to the way some farmers operate here," said Mr Ekron who runs between 3500 and 4000 Merino ewes on "mountain veldt" at Barkly East in the eastern Cape Province.

"It is too hilly for cropping - you would not get most of the machinery used here down our roads, it is too big.

"It's a colder climate which dictates when we do things.

"I only shear in November and I sell my wool at the third sale of the new year, at the end of January," he said.