It was a fine decision when Ken Keith thought he could transform the family farm Stanleigh near Parkes from a cropping to a Merino fine wool operation.
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The move has taken some time but it is all now seeing top dividends with regular topweight clean fleeces and pleasing fine wool - especially in the last season - that regularly goes 17.5 microns.
It's all in an area just on the western side of Parkes where they did not think fine wool should or could be grown.
The fleeceweights have been outstanding on the 10-month-old hoggets.
Cressbrook blood has seen ewes bulk up in weight on the Parkes Central-West lucerne fields and Mr Keith (on the cover) has seen a dramatic boost to fleeceweight by keeping a close measurement on his flock.
With objective measurement, they run about 1800 breeding ewes on 750 hectares, and have obtained premium fleeceweights for hoggets - the best in the district.
"The original micron was 18.4 and clean fleeceweight was 2.08 kilograms on our hogget ewes shorn at 10 months," he said.
"Last year, after the great season, the micron was 17.5 and clean fleeceweight was 3.84kg.
"We have had an emphaiss on increasing fleeceweight and holding micron about 17 to 17.5. We cull on the testing results plus any obvious visual faults.
"This was a great result for young hogget ewes."
The adult wool staple regularly goes 103mm, and the hoggets 94mm.
The main issue with growing fine wool west of Parkes was the fear of dust in the fleeces - and there was plenty flying past in the last three years of drought.
But it has not been a huge issue, especially with the beautiful clean weather of the last year.
"Going to fine wool has been what we hoped was a long-term future for us near Parkes," he said. "It is a journey moving out of cropping about 20 years ago."
The Keiths shear adult sheep including hoggets in January but then leave the July/August drop lambs to shear at the end of March to get the premium for combing length wool (about 16 micron).
"Hoggetts had length of 94mm, compared to adults of 103mm," he said.
He sells his wool through Ostini Wool, Parkes.
"What we have done here has surprised a lot of people," he said.
Objective measurement of the flock had really changed how they were able to manage fleeceweight.
By experimenting and taking a risk by introducing Northern Tablelands bloodlines they'd increased their production and the sheep were doing better than ever on the lucerne.
Mr Keith, who is the Parkes mayor, is the third generation of Keiths on Stanleigh, but sadly the tradition is about to close.
Part of Stanleigh will be resumed for the Pacific National Terminal as part of the major inland rail project.
That will mean the Keiths would close their association after 98 years - but they will make 100 years.
Ken will lease back some of the land to continue the fine wool operation for at least two years.
John Ellicott
journalist and author
journalist and author
