Sheep Industry News January 2025

cessed, but either cannot meet the minimum batch require ments of larger mills that have remained open in New Zealand, or the infrequency of colored wool processing runs – offered only every two years or more due to the equip ment cleaning time before white wool can go back through – greatly limits the flow of their products. Next, we met David and Viv Strong of Chudleigh Pol warths. They aim for 21- to 25-micron fleeces in their main ly natural-colored flock, and had their recently crowned supreme champion colored fleece on display in their wool shed along with some other beautiful fleeces from their very successful program. Day two of the tour brought us to Tarras, a high-country town that is surrounded by Merino stations and, incidental ly, is where the famous Shrek the Sheep lived. There we met

where Julie Howden shared with us her flock of polled Dorsets and natural-colored Romneys. They also overwinter deer and cattle for neighbors. Julie treated us to a shearing demo and a presentation from a nearby farm on how they had entered into growing hemp for oil and had learned how to make value-added products from that. The next day of the tour took us to Will Gibson’s Blue stone Colored Merino Stud. Will’s lifelong interest and passion for breeding livestock led him to work for a genetics consulting firm and he has been heavily incorporating the use of Australian Sheep Breeding Values into his own flock planning and selection. In addition to the colored flock, Will also runs a group of ultrafine white Merinos, whose wool clip is sold to high-end fashion designers. He has been working toward growing enough high-quality, natural-col

Christina Perriam, whose family owns and runs the nearby Ben digo station. Her entrepreneur ial mother inspired and encour aged her to expand the family business, and so she received a degree in fashion design and created her own 100-percent, New Zealand-made Merino wool clothing lines. Our next farm visit was to the sweeping Matakanui station that covers nearly 9,000 hectares, rising from flat, tillable pastures to the high, hilly country of the Dunstan mountains. By gradu ally improving their pasture land, they have been able to increase their flock size and cur rently run around 20,000 white Polwarth sheep and 1,100 cattle. Owners Andrew and Tracy Pat

ored Merino wool to sell com mercially, but it’s been a chal lenge to scale up to the volume required by bigger contracts that will make the plan more viable. There has been lots of inter est though, so the future looks bright for natural-colored wool making an entry into the com mercial clothing manufacturing world. Will also invited fashion designer Jane Shand to our visit. Jane has been working with Will for more than 15 years, buying as much as a ton of his colored wool at a time, to create 100 per cent, New Zealand-made natu ral colored wool accessories. After ogling his breeding rams and some beautiful Merino fleeces in the wool shed – some as fine as 12 microns – Will

Laurel Stone, right, with her brother and parents.

erson have been focusing on setting up long-term contracts with wool buyers so that they have a reliable income from their 19- to 23-micron wool clip. They currently have contracts with Icebreaker and Smart wool for wool, as well as high-end meat seller Silere. The sheer amount of logistics and infrastructure needed to run a station of this size was astounding, from their seven-stand woolshed and covered yards that can hold 3,000 sheep to the casual way Andrew described their plans to build a hydro plant, solar farm and add kilometers of irrigation lines. We continued south through exceptionally scenic coun try toward Gore with a stop at Norham Park Romney Stud,

gave us a demonstration of how he uses RFID tags and his management software to track and enter data on sheep as they come through the yards. In addition to culling heavily for footrot and worm resistance, he also scores his flock on color and spots since for his line of black wool, he does not want the wool handlers having to spend time sorting fleeces by color at shearing time. As a Merino breeder myself, no amount of time spent at Bluestone could possibly have been enough, and they had to practically drag me back onto the bus to continue our trip. That night we stayed in Oamaru, which is also the site of a blue penguin colony. After shopping at the local yarn

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