Ellingerrin Border Leicester stud win multiple Royal Melbourne Show sashes

Ellingerrin Border Leicester stud, Modewarre, was the only stud to compete in the Border Leicester championships at the Melbourne Showgrounds on Thursday.

Queues stretched for hundreds of metres outside the showgrounds before the venue's gates opened, as close to half-a-million people are set to flow through the gates between now and next week.

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The stud won the breed's supreme exhibit with a rising 1.5-year-old ewe, and backed up the result with the grand champion ram.

Heather Stoney Ellingerrin Border Leicester stud, Modewarre, said she was "ecstatic".

"I thought the ewe might come up as the supreme and she's just one of those amazing ewes you breed every now and then," she said.

"She has a beautiful fleece of wool and has a tremendous outlook."

Ms Stoney started the stud in 1975 and is close to celebrating 50 years in the business.

"It started around the time we were buying Border Leicester rams and where we bought them from was going to disperse the stud so we bought 75 ewes-in-lamb," she said.

"I usually sell my stud rams through the Horsham Border Leicester Show and Sale but that is now no longer happening so we sell our rams on property via private treaty."

It follows a successful year on the judging ring for the Stoney family after they won the champion ram at the Australia Sheep and Wool Show in July.

Border Leicester judge Ross Jackson, Jackson Border Leicesters and Poll Dorsets, Moyston, said the Ellingerrin stud displayed sheep true to the breed.

"It was quite difficult to pick out the best sheep but they were all very structurally correct," he said.

"Border Leicesters are most used over Merino ewes to produce first-cross ewes that then go on to produce the best sucker lambs there are.

"The number of entries is back from previous years because we've been a few years without shows."