O'Brien Poll Merino

O’Brien Dohne Merino and O’Brien Poll Merino studs are run by Darren O’Brien and Jodie Reseigh-O’Brien situated in the Kyancutta district of Eyre Peninsula, SA. The wheat and sheep area is renowned for its hot and dry summers with this in mind we breed sheep with excellent nourishment and staple length.

The stud ewe flock is approximately 1100 adult ewes across the O’Brien Poll Merino and Dohne studs. We also mate ewe lambs at 7-8months of age, this means we are doing a full pedigree and data management on over 1300 lambs.

As we have learnt how to and what data is important to our breeding objectives. We are proud of the data we collect, which means higher accuracies for the ASBVs we measure, meaning you will know how the progeny of our rams will perform.

Over the years we have bought a lot of rams without ASBVs and as we have been able to individually do single sire mating and good pedigree, we think the rate of failure to perform in certain trait that you were buying the ram for without ASBVs (e.g., guess work) can be as high as about 3 out 4 rams progeny not coming up as expected. Hence our push to get our ASBVs as accurate as possible.

When looking for a stud that is going to fit with your breeding objectives, it is worthwhile finding out what they actually measure otherwise it is on an opinion or guess.