A breed apart
It’s often suggested that what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. Our merinos are the living proof. Their bloodline can be traced directly to the foundation flock of 1887: the year of the first clip, and treacherous first winter.
Through a combination of natural selection and selective breeding, the genetics of the merinos steadily evolved. The sheep became increasingly tolerant of the harsh environment, and their fleece increasingly valuable, improving both in quality and yield.
Conditioned from birth to the climatic challenges of farming the Eyre Peninsula west coast, our forefathers knew the key to successful breeding was to consider where the rams were raised, not just their physical attributes. After all, no point introducing genetics to enhance staple length, crimp or some other characteristic, if the fleece cannot also protect against both a 40° summer heatwave and a sub-zero winter morning.
Thankfully, that still left plenty of exceptional sires to choose from—and continues to— including those of the famed Collinsville Merino Stud and a number of its daughter studs, from which our family has sourced preeminent merino rams for more than a century.
