Terry and Marion Mitchell at the Esperance Show with their prize-winning superfine merino wool. Photo: Geoff Vivian.
After taking out this year’s Champion West Australian Fleece ultra fine category at the Australian Sheep and Wool Show in Bendigo, wool breeders Terry and Marion Mitchell won first prize for Merino superfine wool with a fresh fleece at the Esperance Show.
“We’ve been breeding for about 30 years now and we’ve made a lot of progress since we started, but really I’d like to put another 30 years into it,” Mr Mitchell said.
“I used to work on the table with my father who was classing at the time, and I just got to love super fine wool.”
He said breeding was very much a weekend pursuit on his 100-hectare property as he had a full-time job in Esperance.
However simple application of time-tested breeding and selection methods has enabled the Mitchells to compete with large concerns who use the latest genetic analysis technologies.
“At the Australian wool show there’s six objective measurements and there’s three visual judging qualities that they go through,” Mr Mitchell said.
“When you put them through this show, it’s all visual and so you never know what the objective measurement are, you know, spin qualities and all those sorts of things until it goes through those tests.”
He said the latter could “make or break” a winner.
“The fleece we sent last year, it fell down on one of those qualities,” Mr Mitchell said.
“If it hadn’t, it would have been supreme champion on the Australian show.
“So, when you send it, you just kind of hope.”
He said he had spent years developing what possibly began as an innate gift, the “feel” for wool breeding.
“Early on we travelled to different studs and picked up rams Terry thought would be appropriate for bringing the herd on,” Mrs Mitchell said.
“But now we can’t get rams fine enough to continue so we have we breed our own rams.”
Mr Mitchell said he trusted his observation and intuition above all.
“For a fair while this Australian Merino society had a line they ran just on genetics,” he said.
“And it’s actually fallen over. I don’t think it even exists now.
“That was trying to look at it scientifically. Takes the feel out of it.”
Meanwhile Mr Mitchell said they would just “keep on doing” what they were doing.
“We micron sample the young stock coming up and that gives us an idea of how they’re going,” Mrs Mitchell said.
“We keep the best out of those and then we keep going.”
Mr Mitchell said last year’s clip average was 14.6 microns with the top bale 13.8 microns.
“Last year was the first year we sold in the Sydney super fine sale which is in February,” he said.
“We only shore it a few weeks ago,” he said, pointing this year’s Esperance Show winner.
“So we are waiting till February till we can sell the wool.”
Mr Mitchell said the sale price was not the main consideration.
“Thirty years ago when we started doing this the type of wool we’re producing now was worth about $50 a kilo,” he said.
“Fast forward now and our top line got $32 a kilo and our second line, which was 14.8 micron, was nearly $12 cheaper.
“It was $20.50. So one micron, that’s a difference.”
“So we do it for fun, it’s a hobby.”
