Merinos are the ideal sheep for Marlborough, father-and-son team Ron and Tom Small say.
The Smalls won supreme champion wool sheep at the Canterbury A&P Show two weeks ago with their 2-year-old merino ram, beating Corriedale sheep farmer Jim Sidey, of Culverden, who had won the competition for the past two years, in the final.
Tom said they had been sending merino sheep from their Blairich Merino Stud to the show regularly since it was founded in 1990, but this was the first time they had won top honours. ''We're pretty happy all right. There was very stiff competition in the final. It's very hard to beat the
Corriedales down here. I actually thought the Corriedale had won - I didn't hear him say `the merino','' Tom said after he realised the ram had won. ''It's a good venue to bring sheep to, especially for people who don't normally see sheep.''
The pair, who farmed 900 stud and 4500 commercial merino ewes, said the breed was ideally suited to farming in Marlborough. ''They handle our conditions, with the dry summers, very well,'' Tom Small said. Ron said he enjoyed working with merinos because they were ''so pure in the wool''.
''It's the only pure sheep breed I've ever really had anything to do with,'' Ron said. ''I grew up in Central Otago with half-breeds and then I went away mustering in high-country stations and worked with merinos, so I got to know them.''
Ron said after buying a farm in Marlborough he began farming merino sheep commercially, until a visiting Australian sheep and wool officer suggested he get into breeding merino stud rams. Despite the pure wool, their main income source was from selling rams. ''The killing of lambs and hoggets is so important to our clients, so the meat is a big part of it, too,'' Ron said.
BY Dabid Hill