BENCHMARKING productivity across the farming enterprises helps ensure Nimmitabel graziers, the Taylor family, reap the full potential from each hectare.
Richie Taylor - also a founding director of Growth Farms, which provides domestic and international investors access to professional management skills of successful farmers for their long-term agricultural in-vestments - and his brother Duncan are fourth generation woolgrowers at "Bellevue", Nimmitabel.
During their tenure the business has grown to include two more properties, one on the Monaro and one on the South West Slopes near Adelong.
While it is all run as a family business, operationally it is split in two.
Richie and his wife Fi take care of the Merino enterprise at the home property "Bellevue", south of Nimmitabel, and another property at Kybeyan used for lamb finishing.
Duncan and his wife Bronnie run the property "Bobingah" and "Hyland Grange" at Nimmitabel, as well as the Adelong farm.
The brothers' father, Peter, is still involved in the business.
Their farm business has grown to carry more than 40,000 sheep, including 20,000 "Bellevue" blood Merino ewes and 4000 head of cattle, with an annual turn-off of 1000 steers.
Richie Taylor was involved with the board that established Monaro Farming Systems (MFS), a farmer-driven initiative for Monaro farmers, seven years ago and has since been involved with three MFS benchmarking programs.
More than 50 farm businesses are now part of the MFS group which represents about 40 per cent of the production of the Monaro.
The Taylors have participated in the MFS' wether trial, financial benchmarking program and soil benchmarking program.
"MFS is about gathering more information from these benchmarking programs so we can see the strengths and weaknesses of our own business but also to see what we can learn from other growers," he said.
A team of 15 Merino wethers from "Bellevue" were entered in the MFS wether trial, which started in 2012, and wrapped up this month.
The "Bellevue" team placed ninth out of 24 teams and cut 4.6 kilograms of 17.7-micron wool (clean fleece weight) at the final shearing.
The top team returned an average fleece value of $60 a head with the top two-thirds of the flocks making more than $55 - the "Bellevue" team made $57/head.
"There wasn't much in it price-wise, which proves the genetics growers are using are very good," Mr Taylor said.
The focus of the Taylor's woolgrowing enterprise for the past 16 years had been reducing fibre diameter, while increasing fleece weight.
They had managed to take about 2.5 microns off through sire selection, which now had their flock averaging finer than 18-micron.
This had also paid off with a slight increase in fleece weight with their adult sheep now cutting an average of about six kilograms (greasy).
While they are now growing wool in the fine wool range, Mr Taylor was not deterred by the subdued market.
"Some years with fine wool you don't get much of a bonus, but other years there is a huge premium," he said.
"Breeding is long-term gain so you need to have a long-term focus."
While continuing to decrease micron the Taylors are also looking to improve staple strength.
Mr Taylor said when they started their ram breeding flock about 20 years ago, from a Hazeldean base, it was unknown that when growers focused on driving down micron while keeping fleece weight up it would come at the detriment of staple strength.
He believed they lost about three to five Newtons per kilotex during the first 10 years.
"We have had to reverse that via ram selection and now we have just got back to where we started," Mr Taylor said.
Fleece weight, fibre diameter and staple strength were the main traits Mr Taylor focused on in the ram breeding program.
The wool's ability to stand up to the weather was also important because summer rainfall on the Monaro could put a lot of pressure on sheep for fleece rot, hence, it was a visual trait he was mindful of.
"I don't really care what they look like as long as they have a good constitution and produce lambs,'' he said.
"I am not really breeding to a type as the best external test of our sheep is the benchmarking information.
"I am pretty happy with the bodyweight of our sheep with our wethers weighing in the low 50kg range.
"The industry trend was towards bigger dual purpose type sheep, but bigger sheep eat more and (alternatively) we will produce more wool per hectare."
One-year-old Merino ewes were visually classed by Mr Taylor for constitution and the best 60pc that pass are then fleece weighed and micron tested at their first shearing.
The top five per cent of ewes then go into the ram breeding flock, which consists of about 600 Merino ewes.
These ewes are split for joining into seven to eight different breeding groups, one of which is artificially inseminated to a Sheep Genetics benchmarked sire.
“To link our flock to the Sheep Genetics database we need to use a well benchmarked external ram and this allows us to compare our sires as we have estimated breeding values on all our rams,” Mr Taylor said.
The young rams, meanwhile, are also shorn and tested twice before joining, which allows Mr Taylor to obtain two sets of figures from the rams to use in selecting the best replacement sires.
At the second shearing in February all rams were also tested for staple strength, which was relatively expensive at $4 a head.
The Taylors have used a variety of bloodlines through the years, including Hazeldean, Nerstane and Centre Plus genetics.
“I try and find the best performing sires but they also have to be a well benchmarked sire to give us good linkage,”Mr Taylor said.
“We have had the best results from Hazeldean genetics.”
The Taylors retain about 100 rams a year for their own use, sell about 100 and cull about 100.
Mr Taylor said the Bellevue bloodline wasn’t registered as a stud as they only sold rams to farmers who knew their stock and were comfortable buying them shorn following testing.
He said selling rams covered the cost of fleece testing and artificial insemination.
They only shore the main flock once a year and while the over-spec staple length came at a cost, it would be a greater cost to shear more than once a year than to have a slightly longer staple length.
When their hogget sheep were shorn in September at 12 months old they cut a 100 millimetre staple length and were in the 15- to 16-micron range.
The Taylors have a strong closed flock policy, with the only outside genetics introduced via AI.
