The Dowling family of Gunning have been building their self-replacing, superfine Merino flock for six generations, currently joining around 10,000 ewes.
Kelly Dowling, who runs the business with her brother Luke, his wife Theresa and parents Kim and Eric, said their aim was to produce the finest wool they could, while cutting the maximum kilos per head possible.
She said due to market pressures, as a family, they made the big decision to stop mulesing last year.
"Ultimately 70 per cent of our income comes from wool," Ms Dowling said.
"The market pressures that we've seen over the last year made us realise that we probably needed to see if we could go down that path and make it work.
"If that's what the market wants, that's what we've got to produce and we've just got to find a way to do it."
Ms Dowling said they had new management strategies to help them make the transition including an extra crutching.
"There may need to be some preventative chemical use moving forward at certain times," she said.
"We're also envisioning some genetic selection pressure on plainer breeches."
The Dowlings did not mules last year's lambs, which had their first shearing in November.
Ms Dowling said they made the decision to pay their shearers extra because there was more work involved in shearing non-mulesed sheep.
She said they had not seen and did not expect a reduction in wool cut for their non-mulesed sheep but had noticed some animal health benefits post marking including better mothering up.
There had also been increased competition at market for their non-mulesed wool.
"There's definitely wool buyers who need to fill contracts for non-mulesed wool, there was a lot of interest," Ms Dowling said.
"We need to maximise competition for our wool and non-mulesing has certainly done this,"
The decision to give non-mulesing a go is indicative of the Dowlings' philosophy to embrace change in their business.
"We're always looking for new ways to do things, we never think we have it right," Ms Dowling said.
Another example of this approach is the Dowlings early-adoption of using objective breeding values to class their sheep.
"Dad started doing it as soon as the technology became available to in-shed test, so we've been micron testing for 30 plus years," Ms Dowling said.
"Every single ewe and wether bred into the system is micron tested and fleece weighed at shearing now.
"We take out the bottom 20 per cent and then the top five per cent go into our stud group where they are AI'd to breed our own rams."
She said they were considering adding body weight to their index of measurements.
"At this stage we like how our index works and how our sheep perform but it might come into it in the future," Ms Dowling said.
"However, the more parameters you put into your index, the longer it takes to achieve those.
"If you put more pressure on something, you slow down the key profit drivers of fleece weight and micron."
Ms Dowling said it was only in the last three years that they had started testing their wethers as well as their ewes.
"It has been one of our best decisions, it means we can cut off our least productive sheep straight away and the top 25 per cent get tagged," she said.
She said in tougher years having the top 25 per cent marked helped them make more informed decisions.
"If we have to put pressure onto the flock or reduce numbers, we will definitely keep that top 25 per cent and then the middle 50 could get sold," she said.
During this drought the Dowlings had not had to reduce stock numbers yet but had expanded their country so they were running less sheep per DSE.
"We've been feeding for two years now," Ms Dowling said.
"Mostly lentils, faba beans and field peas, we try and go with high protein, but we're back on barley now because of supply and cost issues."
She said their sheep were currently fed two to three kilograms of barley twice a week.
"The rainfall we've had this year has been very varied over the four places, an inch or two would be great to help keep the clover germinated," Ms Dowling said.
