Our Sheep

Keri-Keri sheep are accredited under the Market Assurance Program for OJD to the highest level of assurance, being MN3.

The Keri-Keri Sheep are renowned for their large bone, lovely soft open faces, huge plain bodied frame, fast growth rate and heavy cutting soft wool.

Keri-Keri Sheep are bred on the criteria of:

1. Survival
2. Reproduction
3. Wool and Meat

Physical Characteristics

The Keri-Keri Sheep are renowned for their large bone, lovely soft open faces, huge plain bodied frame, fast growth rate and heavy cutting soft wool.

Keri-Keri sheep have been vigorously selected for these characteristics for nearly 100 years, together with factors including wide open frames, a free loose skin free of wrinkle, rapid growth rate and structural correctness (particularly in the legs and feet). 

No supplementary feeding: our sheep have proved themselves time and time again – naturally.  During the 2002/2003 drought, and again in the 2018/2019 drought, when only weaners were fed a basic maintenance ration – all adult sheep survived well on their own. 

They survive and thrive in a fully natural habitat of extreme plains conditions.

This success is due to the fact that, as mentioned above, the first priority in selecting sheep on Keri-Keri is “survival”. We experienced below average to drought seasons for a prolonged time between 1989 and 2003 and it was a great opportunity to see how the sheep performed under harsh conditions.

Dual-purpose / multi–purpose seem to be the current key words on everyone’s lips and selling promise. Yes they are very important traits but old fashioned to us, as we’ve been doing that for years and are already onto the next stage of breeding better sheep. 

One post-ram sale newspaper articles described the Keri-Keri sheep as “sheep for all seasons”. This is proven by the wide diversity of clients. Even as far back as 2006 we exported semen to the Falkland Islands where clients were looking for fleece rot resistance and trouble free feet due to soft and peaty soil. After inspecting the sheep on property at Keri-Keri one of the importers said “if they can survive here they can probably survive anywhere”.

These big boned ewe weaners (below) are highly fecund, and at classing time are selected for twinning ability. With their dense and long staple length, Keri-Keri has been shearing twice a year for over 10 years now. 

Keri-Keri sheep are a breed unto themselves, and an unusual feature of our classing system is that all ewes and ram lambs are run down the classing race before any other classing activity such as assessing their wool. Sheep that don't fit in with the above criteria are culled, and never looked at again.

We believe we create fertility on the drafting gate, and over the years have developed a tremendously pre-potent genetic makeup, that when crossed over many other flocks and bloodlines, immediately make a tremendous improvement in sheep that have become 'tied up' with wrinkle, small frame, high maintenance and fertility problems.

Four teaters - In the past Keri-Keri also selected for ewes & rams with four milking teats

"When Dr Jim Watts left the CSIRO, I approached Jim to further advance the stud, and he accepted the challenge. Jim also noticed that about 15% of the sheep had four milking teats. We put a mob of these ewes together and found we could get a much higher lambing percentage, and the weaning weights were a lot higher. The Four teater flock now numbers about 350 ewes. We are now able to identify these sheep as lambs, both males and females. They are having higher lambing percentages, less or nil losses, and have at least 15% higher body weight."

(Peter Dowling, 2005)

Mulesing: The issue that won’t go away.

Breeding sheep to meet unmulesed standards is not the drawn out job that many make it out to be. It can be achieved in a short time using selection & breeding in the right way. You will not lose anything getting there and more often than not gain a great deal.

These gains include: 

• better meat sheep through faster development of lambs produced by bigger milk production from ewes

• a gain in wool quality & quantity. Thinner skins being more productive. The biggest organ on the sheep should be the most efficient.

• good food conversion by making the most of every mouthful, for survival, for the lamb, for the skin.

In 2009 and 2010 with heavy summer rainfalls our district experienced a bad & extended fly season. Keri-Keri sheep had from, no significant affect, to no affect at all as was the feedback from many clients. 

Ewes and fecundity

Fecundity [fi-kuhn-di-tee] (noun): the quality of being fecund; capacity, especially in female animals, of producing young in great numbers; fruitfulness or fertility, as of the earth; the capacity of abundant production. i.e. the number of lambs weaned

The difference between fertility and fecundity is an important point. Not only are the Keri-Keri ewes renowned for their high fertility rate (conception), but more importantly they are sought after for their strong rearing characteristics such as milking and mothering to produce a strong, healthy and heavy lamb at weaning.

It isn't profitable to have ewes that bear a high percentage of lambs but cannot keep them alive.

The fecundity of a Merino flock used to be acceptable at about 70 - 80%, but is now expected to be much higher, to be competitive with meat production breeds and to be profitable. A higher fecundity rate also assists in producing surplus progeny, giving greater breadth of selection and helping rebuild flock numbers following drought conditions and to enable Australia to keep its wool and meat production increasing.

A plain bodied sheep encompasses the characteristic of an extended neck which avoids difficult births in ewes and also allows sheep to forage better, especially in drought conditions. The Keri-Keri sheep exhibit this trait strongly as they have learnt to browse on trees and bushes, and not simply graze 'downwards'. The sheep that tend to exhibit these survival behaviours also are associated with high survival rates of progeny and high fecundity rates.

High fecundity - ewes have multiple lambs and are able to rear them.

Mothering Ability

Apart from being big profitable wool cutters in adverse conditions Keri-Keri sheep are easy to care for, and produce much sort after dams for the fat lamb producers as shown in prices realised in special sheep sales year after year. 

The Keri-Keri's are also renowned for being good mothers. It is not uncommon when the ewes are in the yards with their lambs, to see them chasing the dogs away to protect their young. At marking time, the ewes are let loose back in to the paddock as soon as the lambs are drafted off. The ewes always hang around the outside of the portable yards, waiting to get their lambs back, even though the paddocks are possibly 5,000 acres in size. (No need to pen the ewes and lambs up overnight to help them mother up)!

Wool Characteristics

"We are looking for high follicle density of very long and fine fibre diameter fibres. This requires a large starting population of pre-papilla cells to be available in the unborn lamb's skin from day 60 of gestation onwards and for these cells to be distributed as many small clusters. We are looking for very fine primary fibres of uniform diameters, high follicle density associated with high levels of secondary follicle branching (or high secondary follicle to primary follicle ratio), fine secondary fibres of uniform diameters, and from fleece samples, very long fibres of uniform length.

"Merino sheep have on average, 55 follicles per square millimetre of skin, and a secondary follicle to primary follicle(S/P ratio) of 20 to 1. Primary fibres are usually 1 to 2 microns coarser than the secondary fibres. The fibres grow, on average, at the rate of .30 millimetres per day.

"However, the Keri-Keri merino sires record densities about 50% higher, and fibre lengths 200 to 250% higher. Quite amazingly, we frequently find that the primary fibres of Keri-Keri sires are now measuring about 6 to 8 microns finer than the secondary fibres, or about 13 to 14 microns in diameter - clear signs of advanced follicle formation."

(Dr Jim Watts - 2005)

In the laboratory, the skin sample is used to measure wool follicle density where the skin sample is cut into horizontal sections, each about 25 microns thick. The sections are stained to highlight the wool follicles and fibres, and then examined under a Reichert lanometer microscope. The density or number of wool follicles per square millimetre of skin, the number of secondary follicles to primary follicles are counted and the diameters of the primary and secondary fibres are measured. A wool sample is taken from the mid-side region to measure fibre length. This is done before the animal is shorn.

Startling breeding improvements were achieved by Dr Jim Watts with the Keri-Keri sheep by selecting sires and ewes that had this desired long, soft and free growing wool.

By simply applying this selection technique, in ten years the fibre diameter reduced from 27 to 21.5 micron, and the fleece weight increased from seven to nine kilograms per ewe for a 12 month growing period.

Past & present

Two of our sires to have major influences over the stud since the late 1990’s and into the current time have been:

Keri-Keri 8107 (1998 drop) – Sheep genetics ID: 502544-1998-980107 

A great product of our breeding program was this leading sire that was a four teater ram that produced many female progeny with udders of four milk secreting teats. He was a great sire for producing progeny with high fibre density and length. His genes were very dominant and his offspring easily recognisable. His semen was used in many Australian studs and also exported overseas. 

Even in 2020 he is still included and listed as a Merino Super sire on the Sheep Genetics database. There are only 917 of them ever bred in Australia, of the billions of sheep bred. He is in the top 25 for Adult Weight and the top 50 for Yearling Weight – with most of those above him having been bred since 2010, with the advantage of having had the Merinoselect system in place to selectively breed. 

Keri-Keri 6304 (2016 drop) – Sheep genetics ID: 502544-2016-160304

Another sire that we have used for a number of years in the stud is a 2016 drop ram Tag number 6304. His offspring are continually heavy weighing progeny which is backed up by his breeding values for YWT; HWT & PEMD all being in the top 5% for Australia PLUS YEMD and DRESS figures in the top 1% (as at April 2020). 

His value as a sire for us can be seen simply by his visual attributes and his horned genes continually impact on his progeny producing consistent good frames and wool quality. 

Some past unprejudiced results: 

(a useful way to prove the strength of the Keri-Keri bloodlines)