Wool tradition reaps supreme ribbon

The Edmonds bought the Mannalea stud in November, 2009 and have continued on former Mannalea stud principal Norm Roe's tradition of entering the fleece competition at the Perth Royal Show.

"It was very pleasing to hear that we had exhibited the supreme champion fleece this year," Mr Edmonds said.

"Norm had eight ewes in his shed he used to use for competition and we decided to continue preparing them and have entered their fleeces again this year."

Last year Mr Edmonds exhibited the grand champion pair of fleeces and champion fine wool fleece at the Show.

He said a lot of the praise for the award should go to Carol after she did the majority of the ewes' preparation.

Fleece competition judges Cameron Henry, Landmark, Peter Silverman, Landmark and chief judge Tim Chapman, Primaries, said the fleece was of a very high quality, scoring 95 out of 100.

The 19.1 micron fleece had a spin fine rating of 17.8 and yielded 76.5 per cent and scored very high for evenness, colour and character.

The fleece also scored well for its overall soundness and had a tensile strength of 44N/kt.

The fleece had a co-efficient of variation of 15.2 and a comfort factor of 99.9pc.

It was 135mm in length and weighed 8kg skirted.

"The fleece was of a very high standard and really stood out among the group," Mr Chapman said.

"It was a beautiful white fleece and had very nice handling and great character right the way through.

"The colour was really nice and bright and it really was a great fleece.

"To score that high at the Royal Show it had to be good."

Mr Chapman said they received 215 entries this year, which was up from just under 200 the year before.

"Overall the wool quality throughout the competition was very good given the bad season last year," he said.

p Check out next week's Farm Weekly for all the results from the first weekend of the IGA?Perth Royal Show.