About Us

Please click here for our latest newsletter which details the non-mulesing status of our 36 SRS® Merino and Poll Merino studs.

Figure 1. Dr. Jim Watts M.V.SC., Ph.D., specialist in fleece and skin biology and animal breeding.

SRS® is a unique breeding system for developing new genetic types of sheep, goats and alpacas with fleeces of unparralleled quality. It was invented and implement by Dr. Jim Watts.

The new breeding technology allows meat and milk breeds of sheep and goats, that previosuly produce no wool, or inferior wool, to be transformed into valuable wool-producing animals without any loss of meat or milk production.

Figure 2. A new synthetic breed of goat.

For example, this 6 month old goat weights 46.0 kilograms, or about twice the body weight of an Angora goat at this age. It is a triplet producing good quality mohair 125.0 millimetres long, 25.0 microns in fibre diameter and an estimated fleece weight of 3.0 kilograms. The fleece sells for up to AUD $30.00 per kilogram. It is the progeny of an SRS® Angora buck with a fleece of high density and length joined to a Boer (meat) x Saanen (milking) doe which has no fleece.

Using the SRS® breeding system, remarkable genetic improvements have been achieved in the quantity and quality of fleece produced by Merino sheep, Angora goats and alpacas; animals that normally grow long and fine fleeces. In many flocks and herds, the wool or mohair is almost twice as long, is finer and softer, and there is a lot more of it.

The Merino sheep no longer have to be mulesed, are easy to shear and rear more lambs.

Figure 3. Twelve month old SRS® Merino ewe hogget growing more than 200 millimetres of 17.5 micron wool in a groudht year where only 100.0 millimetres rain fell.

Alpacas are now being breed with wool as fine and as valuable as cashmere and able to produce about 50 times the fleece weight of the cashmere goat.

Figure 4. Some alpacas can produce as much as 50 times the fleece weight of a Cashmere goat at a similar fineness.

The SRS® breeding system is used in seedstock production and seedstock marketing systems involving livestock producers in Australia, New Zealand, South America, USA and the United Kingdom.