6th Ram Sale ~ 1st December 2025

We would like to welcome you to our 6th on farm Ram sale. After last Spring we thought we could never get 2 in a row but mother nature has certainly delivered again!! After a brilliant winter the spring has been cold and windy. However we are absolutely rapt with this years lineup of rams. With grass tight the ‘do ability’of the rams has came through and it certainly can give people confidence that the genetics we are producing can handle any environment. Wet, Dry and Cold!! This year we are offering 78 Pure Coopworth Rams, 2 Wharetoa Maternal Ram and 49 Dorset Down Rams for sale. We are also offering 14 Beechwood Romneys like we did in 2024. We feel offering a large selection allows greater decision making around Ram selection. We want people to choose the Rams they like and feel this selling method allows people this opportunity to look at a line of sires. We will also have Rams available for private sale of all 3 breeds. We will also be running the sale in conjunction with Bidr. The sale will be live streamed so people who cannot travel will have the ability to watch and bid on the auction from their home. The 2 Coopworth studs are run 100% independent of each other on seperate farms. We use different sires but often swap ewes to give us a stronger linkage under SIL. Both Studs are 100% Pure Coopworth with no other breeds through them, something we are very strong about. Both studs have similar breeding philosophies and between the two makes us one of the largest stud Coopworth operations in the South Island. This allows us to select only the top Rams for sale ... we believe it’s about quality not quantity. All the Rams have been through a vigorous culling regime and only 20% of Rams born make it through to our sale mob. We believe there is little difference between the first and last ram up in the sale ... something we are extremely proud of. This year we introduce Moeraki Downs 1149/22 and Ashaig 17/22 as new sires as well as some top performing Ram Lambs from outcross Rams. We have really focused on meat and growth over the past 10 years and the results we see through our commercial operation and feedback from clients is demonstrating to us the genetic gain we are making in these areas. We believe our Coopworths are certainly dual purpose ... retaining the strong maternal ability that the breed is renowned for but having strong caracse qualities that allows clients to achieve superior results using these genetics without having to cross terminal sires across their maternal flock. We have included the SIL Dual purpose percentile Band in the catalogue to show where our Genetics sit compared to other breeds and breeders via SIL. 44 of the 78 Coopworth Rams are in the top 5% for lamb growth with 12 in the top 1%. Remember this is against all breeds, with 244 flocks compared. Against other Coopworth rams these are the highest rams in New Zealand for the breed by a long way. Susie’s family started the Beechwood Romney Stud in the 1950s and in the year 2000 they went 100% North Island bloodlines. In 2014 they sold the farm at Culverden and purchased a smaller block at Rangiora. We took 100 of the best Romney ewes and have ran them with our ewes under our management now for 10 years. The Rams have been sent back to Rangiora and sold from there each year to clients. With the dispersal of the Wharetoa Stud I purchased some ewes and what we thought were the best of the Ram Lambs. The ewes have all been mated to Coopworth Rams and it has been interetsing to see how these ewes have perfomed in our environment. We are offering 2 of the best Ram Lambs we purchased. Our commercial ewe flock still remains 100% Coopworth and no crossing has ever been done. The top 25 rams have been used over our commercial ewes or lambs. The Glendhu Dorset Down stud was established 53 years ago and is now one of the oldest studs in NZ. We have doubled the size of our stud over the past 5 years and this year started with 150 ram lambs to get our sale mob from. Our focus on our Dorsets is simple. We want strong growth from birth to weaning with high muscle and lambs that will yield highly. We believe terminal lambs should be killed off mum as we try to maximise profit per ha. We also have a strong focus on fertility, making sure ewes have 2 lambs at weaning time. We believe in using performance data on our Dorsets to help us drive genetic improvement to ensure we use the best genetics we can. We also use it as a culling tool to ensure our terminals have the best data behind them. All low weaning weight lambs or low EMA Rams are culled. All the rams are run in one mob for their life. There are no special wee mobs !!! Its pleasing over 80% of our sale Rams are by our home bred sires. We have used and retained Rams with great pheno and genotype so its pleasing to see them breed well. We look forward to seeing you all and welcome you at any time to inspect the Rams or discuss your requirements. Regards Fraser and George Fletcher Download the Sales Catalogue here.