NUTRIEN Livestock's spring ewe selling season will kick off next week and one sale on the calendar not to be missed is the Corrigin/Wickepin State Premier Ewe and Wether Lamb Sale.
The sale on Friday, October 14, will start at the Corrigin saleyards at 11.30am before moving to the Wickepin saleyards, with this leg of the sale scheduled to start not before 1.30pm.
The Corrigin yarding will feature 4200 ewe and wether lambs, while there will be 6600 ewes yarded at Wickepin.
A feature of the sale will be the complete ewe flock dispersal for Rick and Shirley Elson, R & S Elson, in the Wickepin leg of the sale.
In the sale the Elsons will offer 450 yellow tag (1.5-year-old), 430 purple tag (2.5yo) and 380 green tag (3.5yo) ewes and they will provide a great opportunity for any potential buyer to improve their flock.
Also included in the dispersal will be the mature-aged ewes including 370 orange tag (4.5yo) and 370 white tag (5.5yo) ewes.
These five lines of ewes were all shorn in September and backlined.
Also included will be the Elson's usual class-out ewe hoggets (340 head) that were shorn earlier in July.
The ewes are based on Rutherglen blood and achieved a lambing percentage of 105 per cent across the whole flock in 2022.
Mr Elson's father Peter bought the farm from Clem Agar in 1955 with wife Lesley and Mr Elson came home to the farm in 1968 as a 15-year-old that didn't like school that much.
Mr Elson worked on and off the farm when his brother came home until they added Syd James' block and Lilystone's in the 70s and then bought Boulden's in the 80s.
Currently the Elson's farm stands at 1777 hectares, which is split 50:50 between cropping and sheep.
Mr Elson's main challenges with sheep have been maintaining good drinking water and fencing but he said, "they bring out the good and the bad in you as they are always testing you".
He said when selecting rams, he looked for no wrinkle on the neck, free growing white wools that had long staple.
The Elsons have been sourcing their rams from Buster and Whippy Dawes' Rutherglen stud for more than 25 years which Mr Elson said, "are genuine sheep that you can put straight out in the paddock" and prior to that they were AMS based which, "made them tough".
The biggest changes in sheep over the years according to Mr Elson has been the increase in wool cut, the improved lambing rates and the improvement in the nutrition that is available to them.
Other big changes in farming that Mr Elson has experienced has been going from 'sitting on a tractor for three months ripping up a dust bowl' to now just having 'one pass'.
The 50:50 split of crop to sheep on the property hasn't changed since the early 70s where they used to run 2000 ewes and 2000 wethers.
More recently sheep numbers included 1700 mated ewes with 800 hoggets of which 350 culls were sent annually to the Nutrien Livestock special ewe sale along with 300 cast-for-age ewes.
Up until recently Mr Elson targeted the good live export prices at about June/July to sell his wethers, but with no boats running at that time of year any more the wethers have been sold in autumn and occasionally kept through to spring to get a full wool cut and then sold with timing depending on the season.
The Elson family will hold their clearing sale on Tuesday, February 28, next year.
At this stage the Elsons are not sure where they will end up when the farm sells, but it will probably be closer to their three kids, nine grandchildren and one great grandchild.
Farm worker Quinlan Dungey thought he knew everything about farming and sheep when he moved over from his native New Zealand and began working for the Elsons nearly six years ago.
Mr Dungey learnt ram selection, in particular wool selection, is very important and can be very challenging and there are many traits to look for including style, softness, and the amount of grease.
Apart from farming, Mr Dungey learnt to take pride in the little things but not skite about anything, accidents happen if you like it or not so learn from it and move on and finally at the end of the day, no matter how hard or long, having a beer and laugh makes it feel a lot better.
When it comes to the Corrigin leg of the sale a line to look out for will be 200 1.5yo ewes from the Bell family, JA & KJ Bell, Corrigin.
The Bell family has been buying from the Bolt family's Claypans stud, Corrigin, for more than 40 years
Joel Bell said they have bought from the stud for such a long period because its convenient and because Steven Bolt is a mate that always helped out and because the sheep were big and would cut seven to eight kilograms of good wool.
"Back in the day we had big wrinkly things but we've plained them up without losing wool cut and our wool usually averages 18 to 21.5 micron," Mr Bell said.
He retains 350 ewe hoggets to go back to Claypans rams but also joins some of his oldest ewes to British breed rams to produce prime lambs.
This year Mr Bell has decided to increase his breeding numbers from 1250 to 1650 head.
