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Twelve different families, mothering almost 1000 stud ewes annually, to produce true medium wool sheep. |
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Collinsville is run on a commercial basis comprising of 22,000 merino ewes producing 10,000 merino wether lambs |
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Collinsville’s cropping program consists of 3,500 hectares. This consists of wheat, barley, oats, canola, peas and lupins. |
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Irrigation program is run at North Booborowie and is mainly used to background wether lambs coming into the feedlot |
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Expanding operations in agricultural and station areas, and establishing lamb feedlotting for the domestic market |
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Bioclip At Collinsville we try to be innovative and a leader in its field in the sheep industry. Over the past 4 years we have been trialling with bioclip which is a natural way of removing wool from the sheep instead of the shearing process. We have been bioclipping around 1000 young stud lambs with mixed results. The process is as follows: .jpg) The Bioclip process: Bioclip is a wool harvesting process with the main goal of harvesting the wool from young sheep without injury and providing them with their best opportunity to reach their full productive potential. There are two basic components to the BIOCLIP system, the BIOCLIP injectable and the BIOCLIP fleece retention net. BIOCLIP INJECTABLE: The BIOCLIP injectable product is a naturally occurring protein call EGF that induces a break in the wool fibre. It is administered as a subcutaneous injection the same as many other animal health products. FLEECE RETENTION NET: The BIOCLIP fleece retention net is designed to hold the fleece around the sheep until there is enough wool regrowth to allow harvesting. There are 3 different net sizes to fit sheep from 20 to 50kg live-weight. Each size of net is colour coded and typically only 2 sizes of nets are used on each property. BIOCLIP HANDLER: The sheep are treated in a BIOCLIP HANDLER (similar to a mobile crutching unit). The handler operates on both sides and sheep are typically processed at around 1000-1200 sheep/day. Two people are required on each side for injection/netting with only one/side for harvesting. WOOL IN THE NETS: When the sheep are harvested the wool sticks to the net. Elders have developed a process that allows the wool to be sold in the net, without the need to skirt the wool, greatly reducing the expense of in-shed preparation. |
