Objectives of Roseville Park Merino

Future Directions

We are driven by the demands of our clients and end users and are continuously evolving the type of sheep that we produce.  To meet these demands and to remain at the fore front of the industry we are continuously benchmarking our Merino Stud.

Roseville Park is one of only a few studs that do a wide range of industry comparisons such as Central Test Sire Evaluation, wether trials, fleece competitions, Merino Select (Sheep Genetics), client ewe flock competitions and shows and sales. The stud is also involved in the Information Nucleus program as part of the sheep CRC and is collecting Genomic data on top sires within the stud and is also using this cutting edge technology to obtain early data on ram lambs which are used at 7 months of age to increase the genetic gain of the flock by shortening up the inter-generational gap..

Our customers can be assured that they are buying a genetic package that has been independently tested in a variety of ways and will rapidly increase the genetic gain of their flocks.  We have so much faith in this statement that we guarantee every ram that we sell.

Our aim within the stud ewe breeding flock is to maintain our current micron and to increase fleece weights, body weight, eye muscle depth and reproduction rate.

This is being achieved by rigorously measuring these traits through Merino Select since 1999 using a Merinoselect 7% Dual Purpose index and more recently the MP+ and DP+ Index..

The last few years have seen some outstanding proof of our genetic gain in these traits with sale rams at Dubbo National weighing around 155kg, testing between 16 & 19 micron and cutting up to 17Kg of wool.

Benchmarking

At Roseville Park, the Coddington family have always benchmarked their genetics to the merino industry. Ever since George Coddington won one of the earliest known wether trials at Cootamundra three years in succession in the late 1940’s Roseville Park sheep have always shown their proven genetic predictability and ability to lift grower’s bottom line.

Having won the most prestigious awards and gained the top prices and averages at the major events around the country we have proven that our sheep have stood up to and succeeded against some very tough opponents.

Sheep Genetics

Sheep genetics is underpinned by best practice quality assurance system for data entry, accuracy and genetic linkage before breeding values are published.  Roseville Park is using Merinoselect to improve breeding values to maintain micron and increase fleece weight, body weight, reproduction, eye muscle depth , staple strength, worm resistance and genetic fat depth.

Central Test Sire Evaluation

The graph above shows the consistent performance of all of Roseville Park sires used in Sire Evaluations since 1990. We have entered sires into central test sire evaluation since it’s inception and have found it a very useful tool for comparing our sires with hundreds of Australia’s top sires. Sire evaluation is an independent evaluation of merino sires and offers a high level of assurance in the integrity of data collected and the corresponding estimation of sire performance.