During shearing in late September, we decided that it would be fun to put aside some fleeces from the various age sheep we have in the flock and enter them into the wool judging competition in the Heathcote Agricultural Show, held on Melbourne Cup Day every year.
In recent years it has become a tradition for some of the family to enter items of cooking or art and crafts into the show for a bit of fun but, this year was a little bit more special due to the entry of four separate fleeces for judging.
Since obtaining the Dohne Merino ewes at the beginning of 2021 we have lambed three times (the third this year was unplanned!), all have been sired by our Dohne ram Jeff. With this in mind, we entered a fleece from the original ewes, one each from the 2021 and 2022 drops as well as Jeff's fleece.
And we had success! We proudly took home a First and a Second place for two of our fleeces! It was a great surprise for us to win these awards on our first attempt and will likely spur us on to more competitions in the future.
