THE McShanes of Melton Mowbray are just one of many Tasmanian farming families who are enjoying positive seasonal conditions and market prices.
Brothers Tim and Andrew, along with their wives Flea and Alli, run the mixed enterprise that includes a poll Merino stud, wool production, crossbred lambs, poppies and Angus cattle on 14,580 hectares.
Tim McShane said the past couple of years had been positive for farming, particularly in their area of Tasmania.
"We've had a few exceptional years here both season and market wise," Mr McShane said.
"We really needed it, coming off three years of drought before that. One of the challenges in our job is working within all the variables."
Stockman stud was formed in 1984 from Collinsville bloodlines, Burra, South Australia. The stud has continually improved wool quality from that original base while maintaining some of the frame of the original flock.
Breeding structurally sound, high-performing Poll Merino rams is the main objective for the stud, which has 2000 breeding ewes.
Originally there were two studs, a poll and a horn stud, but four years ago the family completely changed to poll, which for them and their clients has been a step in the right direction.
At this time of the year the focus for the stud is their upcoming ram sale on November 16.
Stud manager Kip Gray said he was rapt with the quality of the rams on offer this year, saying buyers had the opportunity to buy rams from the top end of the stud.
"We start off with around 850 ram lambs which allows us to have large numbers of rams to play with when it comes to selecting for the sale," he said.
"The top 20 per cent of our rams will be on offer."
After starting out with 850 ram lambs they are gradually culled back to about 450 rams for the winter.
"We tip the rams off in December and then they graze on lucerne," Mr Gray said. "In February we conduct a visual classing where around 450 rams are culled.
"During this process we are looking at confirmation, clean open faces, purity in the eyes, and a ram which stands nice and square on its feet."
The remaining 450 rams allow Mr Gray to have a good selection for the rest of the year.
"We then go on to select 60 rams for our on-property sale," he said.
"Another 65 are selected for private trade which usually occurs after the sale.
"About 86 rams from the top end are used as replacement rams for our commercial flock."
Each year about 55,000 commercial sheep are shorn from about mid-November.
The family's adult sheep average about 19 micron.
The McShanes have been running a progeny trial for the past 10 years in which a further 9-10 young rams are trialled for use in the stud.
Mr McShane said the focus for the trial program was all about reliability and performance.
"We trial the best of our young rams against a link sire and semen from a number of outside studs.
"If we are happy with the results from other studs, we will continue to purchase semen and use it in our top end for some diversity."
One of the biggest assets to the stud is the ram Stockman Jim, who is used heavily over the stud ewes.
Stockman Jim is a trait leader in a number of Merino Superior Sires indexes and has exceptional classing results.
His semen is available for sale through the Stockman website and has been sold to Victoria, NSW and New Zealand.
At this year's ram sale, the family are using a combination of current test results and ABVs for the first time.
Mr Gray said the team recommended buyers combine the Australian Sheep Breeding Values with a balanced "hands on" approach when selecting their rams.
Genomics may also be another selection tool used by the family in the future.
"We have just taken DNA samples from the top end of our polls," Mr McShane said.
"We will compare these results to what we've found but from our point of view, this is still in the trial stages so depending on our confidence, genomics could be used as another selection tool in the future.
"We try to keep at the cutting edge of the industry and make the right decisions early."