A HOMEGROWN hot roast lamb lunch cooked by celebrity chef Vince Gareffa and the display of some super soft charity garments knitted from their Derella Downs and Pyramid Poll wool, set the scene that this was to be an offering of dual purpose modern day Merinos at Scott and Sue Pickering's 11th annual on-property sale at Cascade recently.
And that was exactly what buyers found.
With their sculpted iron firepit ball pumping out plenty of wood-fired heat, the metaphorical heat came from activity on the catalogue of 145 fully DNA tested and ASBV recorded Merino and Poll Merino rams.
Under the hammer of ever 'green' auctioneer Neil Brindley, Esperance, selling for Nutrien Ag Solutions, competition from long-time and new clients pushed prices to a top of $6000 for a Poll Merino and average of $1495, up $21 on last year, but with a lesser clearance of 119 rams sold from 145 offered.
Poll Merinos were in hottest demand with the 77 sold averaging $1547, well above their horned counterparts at $1400 for 42 sold.
A stylish woolled Poll Merino in pen three drove the early attention and it was well entrenched regulars Roger and Joanne Nankivell, RA & JM Nankivell, Condingup, who emerged victorious on the sire over first time buyers returning to the Merino fold, father and son duo Ray and Justin Edwards, RM & TF Edwards, Ravensthorpe.
The Nankivells have been buying from Derella Downs and Pyramid Poll for about 10 years at auction, but longer privately.
They seek sirey types from which they can breed their own rams and rarely give up rams of their choice without a bidding fight.
Mr Nankivell said the PH ram, by a Pyramid Poll sire of Kamballie bloodlines and out of a daughter of the Pickering's $52,000 Wallaloo Park 112, caught his eye at the field days for its "clean muzzle, long, square deep body, amazing crimp definition, evenness and staple length of its wool".
Its test figures of 20.5 micron, 3.1 SD, 15 CV, 99.7pc CF, 5.66 yearling weight (YWT), -0.44 yearling fat (YFAT), -0.65 yearling eye muscle depth (YEMD), 20.76 yearling clean fleece weight (YCFW) and MP+ of 153.63, completed the package and sees it destined for duties producing rams for the Nankivell's 1600 head ewe flock.
Not to be deterred on missing out on this ram, the Edwards family set their sights on others they had marked in their catalogue, starting with pen four, a PP ram whose sire and dam were both by Glenlea Park 180018 bought for $34,000 in partnership by the Pickerings.
This was followed by another in pen six, a PP son of a Moorundie blood home bred sire and then in pen 13 they were pushed to the day's second top price of $5500 for an impressive PP poll, similarly bred to lot four with the double Glenlea Park cross.
The ram had figures of 20.7 micron, 3.0 SD, 14.5 CV, 99.7pc CF, 7.48 YWT, 0.44 YFAT, 0.82 YEMD, 19.07 YCFW and MP+ of 160.43.
The Edwards finished with six rams, all polled, at a $2633 average.
"I'm allergic to handlebars," Justin Edwards said.
The Edwards family, which runs about 1200 breeding ewes, is returning to Poll Merinos in search of more wool cut after 15 years focussed on Dohnes.
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They had looked at a few studs before settling on Pyramid Poll.
"I was very impressed with the line-up today," Mr Edwards said.
"We walked in to the shed and opened up the first sheep and both said, yep this looks like the place for us."
They turned to Dohnes to plain out their type and get rid of some skin, a mission accomplished and were now back seeking rams with white wools with plenty of visual character and figures of less than 21 micron, good fleece weight, high CV but still with big plain bodies.
They recently purchased a "good line of locally bred Kolindale blood ewes" and are on the lookout for more Merino ewes to speed the transition back to Merinos.
Like last year, the day's volume buyer was the Fowler family from Chilwell, Condingup, but this time there were three generations present in Richard, his son Simon and Simon's son Jack, fresh from celebrating his team Newtown Condingup's win in its Aussie Rules football grand final three days earlier.
Working with their classer Mitch Crosby, Nutrien Livestock Breeding, they finished with 33 mostly polled rams, 28 per cent of all rams sold, to integrate in to their 25,000 head ewe breeding flock.
Mr Crosby said they were focused on white nourished wools with good staple length and above average fleece weight, but given all Chilwell lambs go through their own feedlot to provide a meat carcase, body shape and size was also important.
The other major volume buyers were both Williams-based entities with Ford Farming accounting for 11 and the brother and sister team of Lewis and Amy Schulz selecting 10 for their family's SJ & BJ Schulz, while Esperance local Paul Thomason swapped his real estate hat for his farming one to buy one Poll Merino for the day's third top price of $4500.
After the sale auctioneer Neil Brindley said while there were more rams passed in than expected the sale was still buoyant.
"Competition from the 20 registered buyers was strong on select sheep and reflected the excellent presentation of the line-up," Mr Brindley said.
"With changes to the farming mix down here and in part fewer or no sheep, the requirement was in some cases for less numbers of rams.
"But these are the ideal easy care, modern Merinos with all the performance data behind them - they are truly quality performance bred rams."
Stud co-principal Scott Pickering said while the clearance rate was a little disappointing "it is what it is" and he was happy buyers had plenty of choice and could source the rams and numbers they wanted.
"It is always a toss up as to how many rams you put up but we don't want our sale to get too dear and see people missing out," Mr Pickering said.
"We did lose a few to extra cropping."
