The Gardiner family held its annual on-property field day and sale in spring sunshine at Moora last week and prices reached $1200.
Following a hiatus from auction and moving to selling rams privately on-farm for several years, it was the family's third on-property sale since returning to public auctions in 2021.
Producers are looking to the horizons for finishing rains - rather than warm spring conditions - and, combined with the challenging sheep and wool markets, this has made it a tough year for sheep graziers in the local area.
Unfortunately, this resulted in only modest buying support on the extensively measured catalogue of 40 productive high fleece weight, low fibre diameter woolled Merino and Poll Merino rams.
This year, the Gardiners moved away from the Helmsman format to an open cry auction with AWN wool manager and auctioneer Greg Tilbrook working hard to extract bids from the handful of active buyers.
Minimal competition enabled buyers to be selective throughout, resulting in 18 of the 40 rams selling at auction for a value-for-money average price of $633.
Edale co-stud manager and partner James Gardiner said they were excited to present their rams again this year and appreciated people attending, either as buyers or observers.
"We just want people to see our rams and feel our wools," Mr Gardiner said.
He spoke about Edale's success in sire evaluation trials - starting with Edale 99Z340S in the early 2000s, whose progeny ranked number one in the country and in more recent trials where Edale's progeny has finished with the heaviest fleece weight and lowest fibre diameter against other well regarded studs.
"Sire evaluation trials are the best way to see what studs can do," Mr Gardiner said.
"It's about fleece weight and fibre diameter as the key focus for us to maximise profitability per hectare by producing a lot of wool of low fibre diameter."
After 20 years, nucleus ram breeder William Easton and his daughter Victoria, FS & JR Easton, Moora, returned to Edale to pay the sale's $1200 top price for a Poll Merino ram.
The 71kg son of 18Z378 cut 3.4 kilograms of wool at its May 15 shearing and had September wool tests of 16.5-micron, 2.4 standard deviation (SD), 100 per cent comfort factor (CF) with scan data of 3.4 millimetres fat depth and 26.9mm eye muscle depth (EMD).
Its Australian Sheep Breeding Values (ASBV) also stacked-up, ranking in the country's top 20pc for yearling fibre diameter -1.90 and top 30pc for FP+ 153.52, as well as being well above sale average for yearling clean fleece weight.
Mr Easton said he was chasing a new bloodline to use over 50-80 nucleus ewes and hopefully produce some flock rams to use in his commercial sheep enterprise.
"It was the best ram in the sale in my opinion and very good value for money," he said.
"It is a good-sized ram with bold crimping fine white wool, even behind the head and it will fit in well (with my flock)."
The most influential buyer at the sale by a fair stretch was Julian Gardiner, Noondine, Gardiner & Co, Moora, who finished with a team of 12 Merino and Poll Merino rams to his family's account costing from $400 to $1050.
His top price bid was reserved for a Poll Merino ram in lot 10 with the 78.5kg son of 19X454 testing 16.2-micron, 2.3 SD and 100pc CF, scanning 3.3mm fat and 31.7mm EMD with a strong set of ASBVs, including -2.87 YFD (top 5pc), 161.19 FP + (top 20pc), 1.74 YEMD and 0.91 YFAT (top 30pc).
The Gardiner family has been buying rams at Edale for almost 20 years and Mr Gardiner said they were very happy with the way the sheep performed.
They mated 3500 Merino ewes to Merinos and 500 ewes to terminal sires for this year's lambing across two properties, as well as share farm another mixed cropping/sheep property.
However they are still undecided what they will do in the coming mating period.
"Feed reserves are getting thin, so we might have to drop our numbers and maintain our core ewes," Mr Gardiner said.
"It's something we will work through and there are still four months until mating.
"So, there is still time to make these decisions."
PM & LA Sounness, Lower King, made the long trek north and didn't go home empty handed, paying the sale's $1150 second top price for a Poll Merino ram in lot nine containing a 83.5kg son of 18Z066 testing 16-micron, 2.5 SD and 100pc CF, scanned 4.2mm fat and 29mm EMD with ASBVs including -2.08 YFD (top 20pc), 0.87 YFAT (top 30pc) and 1.29 YEMD (top 40pc).
