Clear Hills Southdown rams to $2900 in inaugural online sale

The Goorambat stud sold 60 of its 68 Southdown rams on offer last week to a top price of $2900, to average $1300 across the draft.

For close to a decade, the northern Victorian stud has offered flock rams for sale at the Hamilton Showgrounds, and this year was the first time in the stud's history rams had been offered for sale via online platform AuctionsPlus.

Clear Hills stud principal Graeme Hooper said he was pleased with the final result of the sale which reflected a strong confidence in superior muscle sheep.

"[We're] trying to produce Southdowns with a good hindquarter, muscle, and encourage easy lambing," Mr Hooper said.

"We aim to produce rams with good marbling through the muscle which improves the eating quality."

The draft of Southdown rams were shorn three months prior to sale, and presented "ready to work".

A majority of the buying fraternity was from across the western district, however, the stud attracted buyers as far away as Albury, NSW, in its first online auction.

"AuctionsPlus allowed us to increase our area of demand with buyers from all over the state and interstate," Mr Hooper said.

The top-priced $2900 ram, Lot 55, Clear Hills 550, was bought by Knox Paton, Macarthur.

Mr Paton, a first-time buyer of Clear Hills, bought the ram online and said he was yet to see the ram in its flesh, but was looking forward to putting it to work in his western Victorian operation.

"He has good confirmation and good structure and I'll join him to crossbred ewes in February," he said.

"He's an outstanding sheep and we he was one of five we bought so we're pretty confident about this progeny."

Clear Hills described the ram as a well-balanced future sire with plenty of potential.

"He is a 17-month-old ram and was one of the better carcase-shaped animals in the sale," Mr Hooper said.

"He's also a bold ram that could suit many jobs whether you wanted him over your young ewes or older ewes."

Mr Hooper said northern Victoria was still experiencing the flow-on effects of the drought.

"The drought has reduced the clovers in our pasture so we have a lot of volunteer grasses which are not really welcome," he said.

"Sheep are a lot slower to mature in our district up here in the north-east, but overall it shows that they're a hardy animal and will maintain a good body weight in tough years."

Kerr & Co Hamilton auctioneer Craig Pertzel said the top end of the rams presented nicely and sold to expectations.

"We were thrilled with the sale and it's probably the best result the Hooper family has seen since bringing the Clear Hills rams across to Hamilton," Mr Pertzel said.

"But it was clearly evident that people really wanted to select the better end of the rams too.

"Most of the buyers bought their rams in-person and we had a few lots which sold online as well."