Consistent lines of Meirno ewes at Boorowa

Mr Johnson has bred Merinos for the past eight years, beginning with a traditional, smaller, fine wool type, with pregnant ewes purchased to start the flock at a local dispersal sale.

The now 1450-head Merino ewe flock and wethers are run alongside 500 Merinos joined to Border Leicester rams, and 950 first-cross ewes joined to Poll Dorsets, as well as Angus cattle and cropping.

"Our first Merinos were fine, almost superfine, sheep, but I really wanted to have fine to medium wool cutters," Mr Johnson said.

"We're at 18 to 18.5-micron, and our sheep are changing with each age group, becoming a more productive animal.

"We're still running our first homebred lambs, because we've needed the numbers, and everything is run in age groups, but as they're becoming more Koonwarra-based, there's less need to do that."

Mr Johnson works closely with Koonwarra stud principal Jono Merriman to purchase a consistent group of rams each year.

"We like to have rams that are very uniform in type, with bright, white wool and plenty of staple length - wool that grabs your eye."

Wool cut has had a big improvement, with an average of 6kg per head across the entire ewe flock from a 12-month shearing, and the maidens averaging more than 7.5kg, with a yield of 68.5 per cent.

The wethers have also improved, but they're generally shorn about every eight months, achieving staple lengths of around 80 millimetres.

"There's been value in short wool and it helps with cash flow, plus gives us another go at the wool market," Mr Johnson said.

"The main line is done at the end of February, early March, and the young wether lambs are shorn in November, but by next year we might shear at the same time as the older wether age group if we've still got them."

Wethers have been kept until about three years of age, based on the need to keep numbers up and produce more wool, and running wethers paid off in drought, with more wool at excellent prices.

It also meant that once the drought broke, Mr Ferguson was able to lighten the load, selling wethers for good money and focusing on the breeders.

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Lambing percentages have increased, with consistent weaning rates at more than 100 per cent, and an impressive 147pc at scanning this year.

"Scanning percentages are high this year because we had a beautiful joining period, but lambs weaned is the important number," Mr Johnson said.

"We do give them two chances, and some people shake their heads at that, but we're chasing numbers, and we don't want to be buying in.

"I haven't bought in any ewes because as we've grown and the carrying capacity has lifted, we've been putting all this time and money into creating a uniform line of sheep.

"I might be holding genetic gain back a bit by keeping those ewes, but I'd rather do that and grow the flock than buy in pregnant ewes.

"As we get the numbers, we're getting to a point where we can refine our flock, but we've also got room to move our with cattle, wether and crossbred numbers."

The next step is to re-class all breeding ewes once the production hits capacity.

"We'll keep tightening them up as a mob, and I think that's going to happen quickly when I start getting rid of the older sheep that are a bit off-type," he said.

"That'll give us a really solid, consistent flock, and once we have that we might start chasing other traits. We'd like to be cutting around 8kg of wool and weaning over 100pc - that's a pretty productive line of sheep."

Mr Johnson also has a bit more work to do on the pasture side to boost production.

"We've got the basic mix of phalaris, cocksfoot and sub clovers, but we've started introducing a few new annual species - fescues, prairie grasses and sub tropical pastures - to see how they perform.

"A lot of our work now is cleaning country up to sow it down to pastures, and we're growing lupins, and a lot of grazing crops like oats, triticale, grazing canola and wheat.

"The cropping works well with our enterprises with the fat lambs normally grazing crops, and we're able to turn off lambs at the end of winter, before spring starts.

"The stubbles are a great thing for resting pastures and cleaning paddocks over the summer months, and we do monitor worm burden closely.

"I try to make all my management decisions with as much information as possible, with worm counts, preg scanning, wet and drying ewes at lamb marking, and calculating kilos of available pasture in paddocks.

"Not only is the Merino our main livestock enterprise, it's the core of our business structure.

"If we manage it well not only will it be productive, it will continue to give us the ability to diversify our income through wool, mutton, wethers, and crossbred ewe and lamb production."