WITH records tumbling at most sales this season, the 16th annual on-property sale for the Burrawang Dorper and White Dorper team at Ootha was no exception.
Offering 144 Dorper and White Dorpers, there was a 100 per cent clearance on Monday.
In the breakdown, 96 Dorpers were offered to a stud top of $26,000 and averaged $5136 while 48 White Dorpers offered to another stud top of $24,500 and averaged $5352, believed to be an on-property breed average record.
There were 57 registered bidders on-site and 46 online giving the auction a feel of urgency to get the right ram for purpose.
The top priced ram, Burrawang 6Gun, a three-year-old, 108 kilogram son of Burrawang Old Mate, was considered one of the top breeding rams in Australia, with good feet and strong hocks. He was a type five twin with an eye muscle depth (EMD) of 46 millimetres and fat of 10 millimetres.
Six of his offspring were also offered in the sale for a draft average of $5167.
He was purchased by Mark Cullinan, Keeleen Dorper stud, Wentworth who was hoping the ram would push their stud of about 7000 ewes to the next level.
"We have bought here about five years ago and can see the improvement in our flock so we have come back," he said.
"The evenness right through the sale was great. Over the number of rams here they have a very even standard right through and hopefully will throw through to ours too."
The Cullinans took home a draft of four to average $12,675 including the second top price Dorper, the three-year-old, 121 kilogram, type five stud ram, Burrawang Rodeo. who was the 2020 national supreme champion ram at the Dorper Nationals in Dubbo.
The top priced White Dorper was the 18-month-old son of Loco, Burrawang Big Shot. Weighing in at 112 kilograms, with eye muscle depth of 45 millimetres and fat of eight millimetres, the type five ram was sold to Susan Law from Matchless White Dorpers, Peak Hill.
"We are really excited about this purchase," Mrs Law said.
"We went through all of our rams yesterday and have reached the stage that we are comfortable with what we are producing. We want to move forward and this ram will enhance our traits of length, meat, structural soundness and shedding."
Volume buyers, the Crozier family from Marfield Station, Ivanhoe, picked a draft of 20 between them, half of what they needed.
"This stud improves all the time," Allen Crozier said
"They breed strong and keep going and are very true."
Rod and Linda Chalmers, Barham took home 12 rams for a draft average of $4758 which Mr Chalmers declared could be the best draft they had secured yet.
"It is very impressive; they are presenting them younger, which is interesting, they are getting the rams to a sellable stage earlier," he said.
"We knew what was coming price wise and we like what we like, so you just keep on putting your finger up."
Co-principal Graham Pickles thought it was a great drought recovery sale.
"We're completely overwhelmed by the increase in our previous best sale average of $3500 to over $5200. We know that our existing customer base is the core of our business and, because they were prepared to support us in this sale, our sale price average was a record breaker for the breeds." Mr Pickles said.
"There's no doubt that demand for rams, due to the season and a supply-shortage coming out of the drought, has forced restocking and ram prices up this year. Throughout the drought, we have continued to implement our long standing plans to dramatically expand our stud operation to do our best to meet the needs of our customer base.
"We have continued to expand our stud operation to supply a greater number of quality rams. In the last two years, we have increased our sales to run in October and March. In June this year, we added an annual ewe sale.
"This is the first ram sale in which we've offered over 140 rams, our plans are to offer over 150 in our next sale in March 2021. Our October 2021 sale will include over 200 rams.
"With the additional workload required to produce this number of high quality rams for sale to the market, we have created a new Stud Manager position. Our first advertisement for this career opportunity can be found in the Classified Section of this week's issue of The Land."
The sale was conducted by BR&C Agents with Joe O'Rilley and John Sawyer sharing the rostrum duties.