WINTERBOURNE PASTORAL CO. PTY LTD
Jock and Shara Douglas - Menzies
WINTERBOURNE PASTORAL CO. PTY LTD
My story
I love farming, it's in my blood.
My great grandfather was a sheep
farmer in Australia between 1840
and 1900. He had come from
Scotland and ran a Merino flock of
up to 70,000 sheep in the Riverina
area of New South Wales (NSW). My
grandfather returned to Scotland
and married a Scots woman and
stayed in Scotland. In childhood I
grew up on my father's sheep farm
in the Scottish Highlands, which was
focused on prime lambs rather than
wool. I really enjoyed sheep work as
a boy especially at lambing time with
the shepherd and my father. Lambing
was done indoors as it was so cold.
Production was getting finer due to the
market influence though sheep were
getting smaller and our production of
wool cut was less. We started looking for
different genetics to impact production.
I am still working on it.
We ran a sire evaluation program with
the Department of Agriculture to look
for different rams to use in our flock.
Some worked rather better than others-
we are still trying to improve them. By
carefully recording the better performing
animals, we use electronic tags to track
each individual ewes and rams in the flock,
then weigh the fleeces and measure their
body weight and micron of the wool and
class the sheep- only breeding from the
best. We strive to improve our sheep so
they can perform well in our environment
to produce a world-class fibre that is
clean and sustainable. The wool industry
employs people in every step of the
the production process, helping our planet
become a better place to live and without
leaving a footprint. Wool is natura Ully bio-
degradable, unlike plastic which is cheap
I came to Australia as a jackaroo in 1986
and had a few jobs working with Merino
sheep and soon discovered they were
different from Scottish black face and
Suffolk cross sheep.
Working sheep without good dogs was a nightmare however, in 1988 we bought
our first farm here in Australia at Walcha,
New South Wales and a few kelpie dogs to
help with the sheep. It was hard work and
very challenging especially through the dry
times and the market crash, but the sheep
were still the only thing that kept us going
in the drought. We had to feed them, but
they made a little money. In 1988 | had
a trip to Biella in Italy and the Reda Mill.
I was fascinated by the Mill's brand-new
investment in machinery for the spinning of
wool, dye, the colours and the passion for
our fibre. It gave me the courage to stick with
wool and to target my market rather than
just produce a commodity. So began the
friendship with New England Wool and the
Botto families.
My Australian Story
Shara and Jock's story
Shara and I sold our farm at Walcha in
2001 and bought a farm at Armidale-a
larger one. Now we have 2,730 hectares.
We took all of our 7,500 sheep and the
dogs with us and we now run about 10,000
Merino and some cattle. We also join a few ewes
to White Suffolk for prime lambs.
