Giffard producer continues his spending spree of top-end Merino rams

A Giffard wool and meat producer has continued his spending spree, purchasing the top-priced ram at a stud sale for the second time in less than a month.

Trent Anderson, Sale, purchased the top-priced ram at Burnbrae Poll Merino stud's ram sale at Inverleigh, a few weeks after paying top price for a ram at Toland Merino stud, Violet Town.

Mr Anderson paid $5250 for Lot 5 and $3250 for Lot 9 at Burnbrae's sale on Friday.

Burnbrae sold 71 of 100 rams offered for an average of $2040.

Burnbrae manager Steven Wishart said the average was back on last year, but the stud sold into all states except Queensland.

"There was plenty of interest around the footrot breeding values, because there are top sires we have used which have performed really well in the footrot trials," he said.

"That was one of the pivotal things people were chasing, along with early growth.

"The whole catalogue was within that top 10 per cent for early growth."

The sale team averaged just over 17 micron.

The top-priced ram, 240420, was sired by Burnbrae 23018.

He had a micron of 17, standard deviation of 2.4, coefficient of variation of 15.5 and comfort factor of 99.7pc.

His post-weaning weight was 11.7 kilograms and his yearling weight was 15kg.

Mr Anderson said conditions in the Sale area were still extremely tough.

He said he recently bought a small block at Yarram, simply to ensure he had enough grass for his 500 breeding cattle.

"This is our third failed spring in a row here - we missed autumn, winter and now spring," he said.

He said the person he bought the Yarram farm from was going to cut silage from the grass it was carrying.

"That will get my cows and calves through," he said.

"I wasn't expecting to buy, but we had no choice, it was a forced purchase - we had zero grass, we were full feeding all the sheep.

"We had two options - sell the cows or go and buy a new farm to put them on.

"I didn't want to sell the cows."

He said he'd been chasing fertility, eye muscle and fat in rams for the past four years.

"I am trying to brighten the wool up a bit, so colour and fleece weight I went for this time round," he said.

He said he estimated he'd spent the same amount of money as he did last year.

"Quality stock always makes quality money, it's just you lose the depth," he said.

He said it was too late for the season to turn around until next autumn.

"She's six months of very hard slog now, there will be a lot of grain feeding," he said.

"There will be a lot of meals on wheels for the next six months at least - and that's assuming we get an autumn break."

Mr Wishart said the ram's phenotype, structure and very white wool stood out.

"The wool quality was in the top 1pc across the industry," he said.

"What fills your bales and what you get paid on was pretty much why they were chasing in that ram."

He said buyers were still chasing animals with good data.

"All the rams in the sale were pretty much twins, including the ones out of ewe lambs," he said.

"It's been very dry down here - the rams get run pretty hard most of the year.

"We got a bit of rain in June and started to grow a bit of grass in July and August, and they grew out really well.

"They were doing 3.5kg a week in growth."