BILL and Sandy Rogerson have built impressive infrastructure on their Casbern Park farm at Glenthompson to give their sheep “every opportunity to thrive”.
Since 1996, they have planted 9000 Cyprus and 25,000 native trees as shelterbelts on the south and west sides of paddocks across the 735-hectare property.
Mr Rogerson said water was the “most precious” commodity, so dams have all been dug deep and rainwater is collected from shed roofs.
They’ve also built small sheds in paddocks to provide shade and shelter to the sheep and their 300-foot ‘Taj Mahal’ of sheds, includes extensive under-cover holding pens.
Mr Rogerson said despite enjoying probably the best season they’ve ever had, they were still feeding out grain to lambing ewes.
Each year, they join 2200 Merino ewes, of which 1300 are joined to Merino rams and 900 of the cull ewes to Border Leicester rams.
It has been a self-replacing flock since 1984, and the only animals that are brought in are Merino, Border Leicester and Dorset rams.
The Merino flock averages 18 micron, and while they have diversified to selling first-cross lambs, wool production is still their main enterprise.
They have been buying Rock-Bank rams from the Crawford family for about 12 years.
“John (Crawford) has been good to us. He does the sheep classing of young ewes every year,” Mr Rogerson said.
Mr Rogerson said he tries to “…buy the best rams I can” at the on-property sale, and looks for good constitution with bright, long-stapled wool with a fine character.
He also credits Bruno De Mattia, Fox and Lillie, for teaching him “a heck of a lot”.
Mr De Mattia visits Casbern Park every year during their four-week shearing.
About 16 years ago started, the Rogersons started testing wool to get rid of sire lines whose wool was stronger. To aid this process, in 2007, they started using electronic tags because too many mistakes were being made with visual tags, and Mr Rogerson said it made culling for wool type so much easier.
Now the flock’s wool type is even enough that they only pick out the “odd one” that comes through with poorer quality wool or conformation.
Rams are put out from December 1 for six weeks at a rate of two per cent. They are achieving 80 to 90 per cent lambs at marking for the number of ewes joined.
The Merinos are shorn in February and the cross-bred lambs in December. Merino wethers are sold off-shears at 4.5 to 5 years old.
Mr Rogerson said they kept the Merino wool “in very tight range” and by using Rock-Bank genetics, they’d go the character back in the wool and were getting a bit more weight in fleece.
In all they run 6000-7000 sheep, including young stock and cross-breds, and Mr Rogerson said they’d found that a good balance of numbers.
“We find once start to stock heavier, it costs us more money.”
They produce all their own fodder and grain.
The pastures are all improved and are sown down with clovers, ryegrass, phalaris and cocksfoot.
They sow 60ha of oats for own use.
They spread about 90kg/ha of high analysis fertilise every year and do soil test every about five years.
