heavily on fleece weight,” he said. “We were about middle of the pack initially. We cut 6kg GFW then and we are now around 7kg GFW of 17-micron wool, which is an extra $14 to $15 per head at recent prices.” On-farm, they follow a tight six-week joining period to produce a July/August lamb. White Suffolk sires are put in with about 1750 ewes in early February for the prime lamb operation and the joining period for the self-replacing Merino flock follows two weeks later. Ewes are scanned for multiples and any older dry ewes culled from the flock. The entire ewe lamb portion is retained each year with some wethers retained as wool cutters when the season allows. Josh said they might retain 50% of the wether lambs to hogget age in good seasons but made the choice to sell off the 2024-drop wether lambs due to limited feed. With the jump in lamb prices in 2025, he said it made sense to sell. The main shearing for the operation is in January each year, however the Merino lambs are shorn in late March before joining the 12-monthly cycle where their fleeces are micron tested and weighed. Ewe hoggets are classed for basic conformation before being joined, with around 20% culled, before being run through another classing based on the fleece values from their second shearing, resulting in another 10% being culled. The Molloy’s have introduced a ranking system for the flock, allowing them to easily identify the better performing sheep in their system. Josh said that they rank the flock into four groups, representing the top 25% through to the bottom 25% and identifying them by colour. They have also recently introduced a fifth colour tag to identify the top 5% of the flock. “We are constantly classing them up,” Josh explained. “There is a 30% difference in fleece weight between the tops and the culls. Once we are past that initial cull on conformation, that bottom 25% slowly end up being culled.” While there was some variation in fleece weights, Josh said there was little difference in the micron across the flock. “It’s so even across the flock now – we can’t see any difference in the bale between the keep and the cull sheep.” Aside from the measured data, Josh said he focused heavily on visual wool quality. “Our focus is really heavily over the shoulder for any colour band, fleece rot or unscourable colour. We have no tolerance for that.” Keeping fleeces as white as possible was a key focus. “I like to think that the whiter you can have that wool, the more attractive it’s going to be to buyers.” – 23 – Hosted by Riverina Merino To be held at Wednesday, August 26th, 2026 riverinasheepwoolexpo riverinasheepandwoolexpo Proudly supported by www.riverinasheepwoolexpo.com
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTI3ODI1