12 Mile Stud Tour Tuesday 10th September 2024

Ram sale Thursday 17th October 2024

Gunnegalderie is a family run merino breeding operation situated 30km NE of Wellington in central west NSW. Joining 3200 ewes (including 850 stud ewes), on 5200 acres of undulating to hilly grazing country with a 600mm average annual rainfall. 

We also run a merino breeding operation at Brewarrina in western NSW on 100,000 acres of native grazing country where we join 6,000 – 8,000 merino ewes.

For the last 20 years we have been focusing on breeding a plain bodied, meaty merino
with high quality medium wool, concentrating on carcass shape rather than weight. This has led to some exciting outcomes including: high fertility, reducing the need for mulesing, 6 months shearing, resistance to body strike and RWS Accreditation.

In recent years we have also been placing more emphasis on objective performance recording. With the addition of muscle and fat scanning, fleece weighing, WEC (Individual Worm Egg Counts) and the use of Etags and genomics testing we are able to mother all stud lambs giving us full pedigree, leading to more accurate ASBVs and more predictable breeding outcomes for us and our clients.

  • High Fertility

    Selecting for good doing sheep that rebound well after lambing ready for joining allows us to consistently achieve weaning rates of 120% - 140%. This means we can cull 50% of our ewe hoggets leading to high genetic gain & plenty of surplus ewes for sale.

  • No Mulesing

    Plain bodies with no body wrinkle enabled us to cease mulesing at Wellington in 2010.

  • 6 Month Shearing

    By selecting for staple length we have been able to start shearing every 6 months. The ewes average 3kgs of 19 - 20 micron wool twice a year, with a staple length of 60 – 70mm. Staple strength has also increased with many lines > 50Nkt.

  • Resistance to bodystrike

    The absence of body wrinkle & highly aligned white wools means no fly treatment is used on any sheep other than lambs at marking.