ILLOURA White Suffolk and Poll Dorset stud celebrated its 75th year breeding stud sheep with another successful on-property sale last Thursday at its Moorlands property.
In one of the earliest terminal sire sales for the season Allan and Sue, and Malcolm and Beverly Piggott offered 300 rams and sold 228 averaging $817.
Most were White Suffolks but about 30 Poll Dorsets also went under the hammer selling to $1300.
The clearance rate was down slightly on last year and the average was down $33 but it was still a very solid result for one of Australia's largest sellers of terminal rams.
It was another very even line of rams with the Illoura trademark of well-grown sheep with good length of body.
The catalogue featured many rams with excellent Australian Sheep Breeding Values including some elite rams on the Sheep Genetics Australia database with exceptional growth figures.
The late Vern Piggott started a Dorset Horn stud at Moorlands in 1938, aiming to produce hardy sheep well adapted to the Mallee environment.
The philosophy of producing no-frills paddock-reared rams with a strong constitution has resulted in very successful business for three generations of the Piggott family.
There were many familiar faces at this years sale who have been buying rams from Illoura for decades, and Allan Piggott thanked them for their continued support as he opened the sale.
For the second year in a row Gerald and Dom Leach, Walpeup, Vic, outlaid the top money.
This year they paid $1700 for a ram which ranked in the top 5pc of the breed on LAMBPLAN with a Carcase Plus index of 198 and Lamb 20:20 index of 113.2.
He had ratings of 10.2 for weaning weight, 17.2 post-weaning weight, -0.6 post-weaning fat, and 1.0 eye muscle depth.
The Leachs also bought a 112-kilogram August-drop ram with a Carcase Plus Index of 200.7
Volume buyer was Gary Obst, taking 17 rams for the family's Mallee and Kangaroo Island properties.
Elders Murray Bridge's Phil Nagel was also kept busy, buying 18 rams for regular Illoura clients.
Mr Piggott said that with recent good wool prices, some clients had changed direction to breed more Merinos, but that would augur well for crossbred lamb prices next year.
The family "got a lot of enjoyment from breeding sheep" and it was an exciting time for the lamb industry with recent technological advancement.
"We always enjoy when every part of the lamb industry is doing well," he said. "We have been performance-recording for 20 years and adopted labour saving devices such as auto-drafters. The next exciting field is the genomic work Meat & Livestock Australia is doing with research-based breeding values for hard-to-measure traits such as lean meat yield and intramuscular fat."
* Full report in Stock Journal, September 19 issue, 2013.
