Agriculture
3 August, 2026
Breeding brings client benefits
THE commodity prices attached to the mighty merino has the team at Willera, Serpentine excited as they steam ahead into the ram selling and field day season.
THE commodity prices attached to the mighty merino has the team at Willera, Serpentine excited as they steam ahead into the ram selling and field day season.
“Never before have we seen mutton and lamb prices so high for such a prolonged period,” said stud manager and classer Simon Coutts.
“The forecast for these prices looks bright, the wool market is up and firing and demand looks like it will keep it not too far from where it currently sits,” said Simon.
Willera genetics offer breeders opportunities in all facets of the merino, not just focusing on one trait or another, gone are the days of placing all the focus on wool, breeders need to be able to spread focus o capitalise on all of the merino’s
production traits, too much emphasis on one negatively impacts the other.
Finding the balance between wool cut and quality, lamb survival, meat traits and welfare traits has seen the Serpentine stud’s genetics become highly sort after, ranking third in the state in 2025 for total rams sold.
Benchmarking tools such as breeding values are used at Willera so that producers are able to compare apples with apples within production traits when considering Willera genetics, these tools are used alongside traditional selection techniques to ensure the fundamentals of sheep breeding are diligently covered “you can’t breed a sheep off a computer screen, but the screen can show you what you can’t see”
This August the stud will host its eighth on-property sale at “Wadalla”, as Simon begins to grade the auction team and select his own flock and stud sires in the coming week the early figure was to offer 160 rams.
However, Simon says this may be increased to match the strong season and the increased confidence surrounding sheep.
As always, the stud will have grade rams available from the September 1 by appointment.
The studs display ram team will travel to the Victorian State Field Day at Marnoo on the August 19 and the Riverina Stud Field Day at Conargo NSW on August 26.
This year’s auction ram team will be as per normal, Lot 1 to 20 will be specially selected by Simon, from then on, the sale runs in tag sequence.
“The buyers become the classers, they find the ones they want, and I think it makes the sale flow nicely” Simon says.
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