Vendor Ian Tubby, Bundaleer Australian Cleanskins, Gingin, talks about his top-priced ram which sold to Wayne Squires, NSW. Video by Mel Williams.
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00:00My name's Ian Tubby from Gin Gin.
00:03Yep, and now you've had sale today at Top Price Honours.
00:07Yes.
00:08Tell me about the Top Price Ram.
00:09This ram here, very clean shedding, and the buyer in the East Estates is sick of the wool on clean skin sheep
00:17and he wants to get the wool off as quick as he can.
00:20So I sold rams to him probably 15 years ago
00:25and he's very keen to get some good shedding genetics.
00:30So I knew before the sale that he was pretty keen to buy whichever, he wanted this particular ram
00:39and he's been successful so I think he'll do very well with it.
00:44That's great. Tell me a little about the clean skins, what's their best qualities or traits?
00:50Well, the fact that they're low cost productions, their biggest asset of course, no shearing.
00:55We've been running them since we started with Damra's back in the turn of the century
01:01and we were making seriously good money when the sheep were all going onto the export boat
01:07and then there's a few hiccups happened with boats being rejected and what have you.
01:12So we realised that Damra, which is what we were making most money out of,
01:15was probably only suitable for that market so we've had to make some suitable changes.
01:20I announced at the clean skin sheep seminar in 2010 that I was intending to mix up some different breeds
01:32to try and get the best out of all the African breeds that had come in
01:36and in 2011 I'd already started breeding them
01:40and I released the first Australian bred clean skin for Australian conditions in Australia.
01:46The only other one that had been done before that was the Wilkie Pole
01:50and that was a derivation of the Wiltshire but all for the same reasons,
01:55getting a sheep that doesn't require shearing.
01:58And what about their lambs, are you able to turn them off quickly?
02:03The clean skin sheep, their lambs are not known for being fast growing
02:09but if you use fertility is what's the important thing.
02:13You need to get 150% lambing and because the private lamb market in West Australia is very well catered for
02:22we realised that we were getting penalised and so we introduced the Charolais to go to the top of them.
02:29And a Charolais terminal sire across pretty much any ewe will give you a lamb that will hit the market
02:37three weeks before any other terminal sire, they're known for that which is important.