“The progeny of the lent ram were outstanding with wool weights in the one-year-old rams of 42lbs and their sisters cutting 29 to 31lbs. In those days you didn’t get wool weights like that, except from Wonga,” John said. Manderley also won the Grand Champion Medium Wool Ram in 1968 with 3.2 “Glamour Boy”, which cut 52lb (23.6kg). On many occasions, John attributed Claude Bowhay to having an impact on his stud breeding philosophies. John marvelled at the Buckinbah length of staple and lock formation. He later obtained a sire from Buckinbah which was used to create the Joh Manderley family. This family bred on and were particularly successful for East Roseville and Glendonald studs. At this time, Manderley were selling increasing numbers of sires throughout New South Wales and Victoria. They were particularly sought after in the west Darling country centred on Bourke. The Williams family established a second Manderley stud, Manderley-Kanimbla, with the Lowe family, selling several hundred rams a year across this region. The most significant introduction to the Manderley stud occurred when John introduced two Koonwarra Uniform sires from his fellow namesake, John “Sam” Williams, seeking to create a new family to provide for an increasing clientele in the Tablelands areas. These two sires were joined to the softest, highly waxed Wonga family ewes. Once the initial selections were made, the resulting progeny were identified with purple tags and remained a closed family. John Williams was remembered saying, “you know they could have been tagged any colour, but bred in the purple seems to fit really well.” In stud breeding, you need to be able to understand the basics of conformation, skin and wool types, and then have the vision to create a type of excellence but also of commercial demand and appeal. John had these skills – in creating the Purple family he combined the outstanding traits of two types into a new hybrid that was line-bred until genetically stable. The Purple family breeding is interesting from a genetic point of view. The top young rams of each subsequent drop were put over their sisters and in doing so the genetic power of the Purples for the desired traits became stronger. With ruthless classing of any off type, over the next decade a family of special Merinos were developed featuring pure fibre with high wax content and length of staple as well as high fleece weights at low micron for the era. When crossed to other bloodlines, the Purple family sires had the ability to instantly impact their traits in one cross as they were so genetically strong in their desired traits. Rod and Adrienne Evans at Boorowa were friends with John and Rosemary Williams and acted as a ram depot for Manderley. They were some of the first to access the Purple family sires. The Evans’ Tara Park stud, now highly rated, was launched in 1979 purely on Manderley Purple family ewes and sires. In that same year, John and Rosemary made the very difficult decision to disperse the Manderley stud after loosing a daughter (who by all accounts was a gifted sheep person) in tragic circumstances. When it was put on the market, the Manderley bloodline was broken up and acquired by several breeders who were to excel in the coming years with these bloodlines. Graham and Robert Coddington, Roseville, Narromine, purchased the tops of both the ram lambs and ewe lambs. Graham Coddington recalls how it came about, “We were at a mid-state ram sale looking at our options to put some new genetics into Roseville. We ran into John Coy who suggested we look at Manderley. Robert went down a couple of weeks Wonga 7.1– The 1969 Sydney Royal Show Grand Champion Strong Wool Ram, purchased for $8000 by John Williams and his Manderley stud, Cooma, in partnership with Ken Karsten, Kia Warra, Weethalle. Manderley 3.2 Glamour Boy– The Grand Champion Medium Wool Ram at the 1968 Sydney Sheep Show cut 52lb. – 47 –
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