Buyers at Friday's Blink Bonnie Merino on-property sale held at Tarana competed strongly on the big upstanding rams with the heavy-cutting, bright fleeces.
On a cold, wet, typical tablelands type of day, buyers pushed the top price to $5200, twice, to clear 50 of the 72 rams offered at auction for an average of $1576.
One of the $5200 rams, Blink Bonnie B33203, by the $26,000 Roseville Park 2933, sold to repeat buyer, Andrew Green, Clear Hills Pastoral, Boorowa.
Mr Green has been buying at Blink Bonnie for a few years and runs 3500-4000 sheep, whch includes about 3000 ewes joined.
He was seeking heavy cutting, bright white wooled rams with long staple length and his top purchase had a yearling fleece weight figure of 122 per cent while measuring 17-micron fibre diametre, 2.9-micron standard deviation, 17.1 per cent coefficient of variation and 99.4pc comfort factor.
Mr Green bought a total of two rams, the second being late in the sale, Blink Bonnie B33271, also by Roseville Park 2933. This ram had a YFW figure of 112pc, with 16.2-micron wool, for which he paid $1400.
The other ram at $5200 was Blink Bonnie G0923, by poll sire Charinga 09, and sold to repeat buyer, Jake Azevedo, "Huntleigh", Dunkeld.
Mr Azevedo has been buying replacement rams at Blink Bonnie since he bought his farm in late 2017.
He runs about 3800 sheep, joining 2400 ewes annually, which are 17-17.5 micron.
He purchased his commercial foundation ewes with the farm and said they were of Roseville Park blood, so the Blink Bonnie rams, with their strong Roseville Park background, were "linking in well with what we're doing here".
Mr Azevedo said the Blink Bonnie sheep handled the wet conditions of the past couple years well.
His $5200 ram had a YFW figure of 122pc, measured 17.2 micron, with a 2.7-micron SD, 15.9pc CV and 99.8pc CF.
This was one of three rams he bought to average $2400. Both of these rams were by Charinga 240, one of which had a YFW figure of 108pc with a 15.9-micron fibre diameter.
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Blink Bonnie stud principal, Peter Moore, also put one ram up for charity, with all proceeds of its sale going to the Cancer Council.
This ram, Blink Bonnie B8588, was by B85, and measured 16.9 micron, and was offered with a yearling eye muscle depth figure of 27 and a 99.1pc CF.
It made $3000 to Mt David Agriculture, Rockley, and was the top price of that company's draft of seven rams to average $1857.
The sale also featured commercial ewes and wethers, which included 210 Merino wether lambs which sold for $130 a head to an undisclosed client of Elders Bathurst, 150 wether lambs for $150/hd to Bede Parsons, O'Connell, 172 Merino ewe lambs for $284/hd to Darys Creek, Lagoon, 51 scanned-in-lamb (SIL) stud ewe lambs for $350/hd to Woodbine Partnership, Ilford, and two lots of 70 head of SIL Merino ewes respectivley made $350/hd and the other at $215/hd, both to Darys Creek.
Mr Moore opened his sale with a few remarks about the stud's success through the year, including grand champion fleece at Dubbo Show and his genetics rating as the highest for fertility in the Bathurst sire evaluation.
He said he was also achieving pregnancy rates of 75pc when rejoining his ewes with lambs at foot, helping to increase his annual total number of lambs.
The sale was run by Elders Bathurst, with Elders agents David Simpson and Jesse Gauci as the auctioneers.
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