IT'S no surprise Pingelly farmer Tim Wiles keeps pursuing the Merino breed.
After 33 years of farming Merinos himself in the area and many generations of Wiles before that, he finally settled at Rockdale farm in 2001.
The 2260 hectare property is between Pingelly and Wickepin.
Mr Wiles shares the workload with his son Kurtis and wife Tammy and the help of his father Kevin a few days a week when he assists with feeding stock.
After leaving school, he moved to Lake Grace to complete an apprenticeship at AFGRI Equipment, before returning to the family farm at the beginning of the year.
He is excited to be back on the farm and hopes to take it over in the future.
"We are always doing something different, it's never repetitive," Mr Wiles said.
The Merino-based farm consists of 1900 ewes, 950 joined to Merino rams and the remaining half mated to White Suffolk sires.
For more than 20 years Mr Wiles has purchased rams from the Woodyarrup Merino and Poll Merino stud, Broomehill.
"I just love the wool they produce and the way they grow out," Mr Wiles said.
"I love that although they are wool-based sheep they can also be meat-based sheep.
"I know a lot of people who have switched to other breeds and shedding breeds, but I just love Merino wool.
"When selecting the Merino rams for his breeding program, Mr Wiles assesses the figures, along with a visual appraisal."
He said his sheep classer Russell McKay was always with them when they selected their rams at the Woodyarrup sale and the pair generally choose from the top half of the catalogue.
As well as the livestock aspect of his property, Mr Wiles also crops canola, barley, oats and lupins, generally sticking to a 75 per cent crop and 25pc sheep ratio.
He is constantly working on pasture improvement and makes an effort to seed clover in all pastures throughout the property, as well as eliminate as much capeweed and grass as possible.
With various granite rock areas being non-croppable, it is the perfect place to run stock and make the most of the profitability that the farm offers.
All stock on the property are supplementary fed from January to July, on a barley, lupin based mix, at a total of three kilograms per head, per week.
Mr Wiles plans his annual calendar accordingly, starting with shearing during March.
"We used to shear in early February, but we have gone later," he said.
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"It's getting harder to get shearers so you just have to take (time wise) what you can get these days.
The Wiles' clip average for the mature age ewes was 8 kilograms, with a micron improvement of 0.5, finishing with a 20 micron.
After shearing, the Wiles' wool is marketed through Nutrien Ag Solutions.
"This year the wool market is very up and down at the moment," Mr Wiles said.
"It would be good if it was more stable but there are lots of things happening around the world at the moment that are influencing the market that is out of our control."
The shearing season is followed by the lambing season and they "always aim to lamb in late June/July".
"We lamb then as we like our lambs to be born onto green feed," he said.
"This year we took a bit of a different approach, we bought in a small mob of Merino ewes, mated them to White Suffolk rams and lambed in April.
"We are just trying one mob early and if it works out we might carry that on with the crossbred side of things, but we will keep Merinos where they are.
"We are experiencing lambing percentages of 120pc for Merinos and 125pc for our crossbreds."
This year Mr Wiles is making the most of the feedlot on the property that they have used on and off over the past 20 years.
"It's great to be able to sell straight out of the paddock if you can, but we have the feedlot on the property so we will continue using it," he said.
Mr Wiles likes to keep the majority of the progeny that drops on to the property every year.
He goes through his replacement ewes with Mr McKay and casts off roughly 30pc to put with crossbred rams and the other 70pc is kept as the self-breeding flock.
Mr Wiles admits they don't use the pregnancy scanning process on his property.
"There was a time that we did use the method but we were finding there were only a few ewes not in lamb," he said.
"This is a job that used to happen while we were seeding, but it just got too busy."
The lambs are weaned in October and the crossbred lambs are sold immediately, last year they averaged $190 per head.
Also at this time the Wiles sell their cast-for-age ewes and they are generally sold about $200/head.
When it comes to the Merino lambs, they are held onto and go on to stubbles when they become available.
"We are very fortunate to use our local Nutrien livestock agent Chris Turton at Turton Rural Agencies Pingelly," he said.
Merino wethers are prepared for sale by first setting them on to a lupin stubble so that they can get as much of a boost as possible before they are put in the feedlot.
The wether lambs go into the feedlot for 35 days and are fed pellets.
"The best wether lambs dressed, averaged out at 27.9kg to Dardanup Butchering Company," Mr Wiles said.
Prior to feedlotting their wethers and selling them as lambs, the Wiles used to sell them to the live export market.
"I think it's going to be a way of the future, if we want to continue running Merino's we've got to be doing something like this, when it comes to our wethers," he said.
