Page 6 - Newsletter 2021ab Merinos 1-2-combined

The highs and lows at

Caroonboon Manager John Stephens

After a fantastic season last year, 2021 to date has been very dis-
appointing from a rainfall perspective. We have had only a 175ml
of rain and the paddocks are thirsty for some more. A small break
in March was compounded with some hot weather shortly after
and diminished the upcoming feed. Since then its been quite dry
until winter, we have had some decent fall in the last couple of
months and a nice green pick is emerging, however follow up rain
is needed to progress and save the season.

Lambing began in April with very limited feed. With the tough con-
ditions the ewes were a bit light on but surprisingly the lambing Clients and agents perusing the Caroonboon Merinos sale ram
percentages were healthy at 102% overall. Xander Landale and his line up at the September 2020 Open Day
crew did another excellent job completing marking in a two week
window.
Weekly wool talk Thursday
Since the start of the year we have been running an intensive
feeding program. Roughly 2,000 bales of hay and approximately
400 tonne of barley and oats has been used to combat the dry 19th August 2021
weather and to keep the stock in good condition. With no bulk feed Kym Hannaford - Nutrien Wagga NSW
heading into summer, its important we can cut as much hay as
possible from the irrigation and hopefully with Calga having a
strong season we will have plenty of grain supply. After the good rise in the wool market since May the price fall
in the first two weeks since the recess was not what was ex-
The Covid pandemic hasn't caused too many issues from a farming pected. In saying that the EMI closed at 1335c/kg clean down 37
operation perspective but it has been very disappointing to miss cents for the week but still 390c/kg clean above this time last
out on show casing our rams at the various sheep shows this year, year.
especially Bendigo. Hopefully 2022 will be a different story.
There were high withdrawal rates across all sectors and sell-
Other projects this year have included rebuilding of our main ing centres and this reduced the National offering to 34425
sheep yards, a new undercover section for the drafting race bales and nearly one third of the reduced offering was passed
(adjoining the shearing shed) and a new sheep handler will be in- in , which tended to stabilize prices in Sydney and Melbourne.
stalled for easier handling of our sheep, especially foot trimming Offerings of around 40000 bales per week are scheduled for
the rams! the next two sales.

We have also had a change over in staff in the last month and I The Australian Wool Production Forecasting Committee’s sec-
would like this opportunity to thank Jez (Jeremy McMahon) for all ond forecast of shorn wool production in 2021/22 is 310 Mkg
his hard work over the years and to welcome Harry Agar to our greasy, up 5.2% on 2020/21. Both the number of sheep shorn
team. and average cut per head are expected to increase.

Moving forward, hopefully we can get some significant rain over Looking forward to later in the year there are reasonable in-
the coming weeks to help salvage the season and achieve some dicative forward prices on offer.
favourable results with our lambs and also our ram sales in Sep-
tember and October. Currently 19 micron wool is around 1655c/kg clean and from
December this year until May next year 1640c/kg clean could
be obtained. This is a guide only. You should discuss this with
your broker.

An update from the Sunshine State

Georgie Pye

Work continues for me at RPS working on Defence infrastructure
projects and Derrym continues at Lendlease working on the Gold
Coast Airport International Terminal upgrade. Hard to believe it but
both Derrym and I get our respective long service leaves this year
which will help out significantly with our plans to take a 12 month
break next year to do the big lap of Australia in a caravan.

Covid has made wedding planning quite challenging with multiple
border closures and lockdowns. We made the decision to post-
pone our wedding from August to the 31 December when hopefully
more the population is vaccinated and there is less chance of covid
affecting our plans (fingers crossed). We are looking forward to
celebrating our special day whilst at the same time bringing in the
new year.