The South West Slopes sire evaluation site operates under the committee structure of the South West Slopes Sheep Breeders Association and is managed and coordinated by the SheepMetriX team. The site committee comprises local stud ram breeders, commercial producers and service providers.
Sally Martin and Rick Baldwin have run sire evaluations in Southern NSW since 2003, including South West Slopes trials in 2003, 2005, 2008 and 2021.
The 2025 drop is hosted at Windella, located between Cootamundra and Temora (near Stockinbingal) NSW, and owned and managed by James and Sally Burge.
The 2025 drop was bred from 1,200 medium framed, Willandra blood ewes, artificially inseminated to 16 sires in November 2024, with 70 ewes allocated to each sire.
The breeding objective is to maintain or increase fleece weight (currently 4.2 kg greasy at 8 months), reduce micron (17.5 μm ewe hoggets), maintain or improve staple length and wool yield, lower WEC, and monitor breech wrinkle (currently score 3), while increasing growth to finish wether lambs earlier, around 11 months, without increasing mature size (SRW 50 kg), and continuing to improve structure and weaning percentage.
