Why Shedding Sheep

The Coddington SheepMaster™ Stud at Geurie was established in 2022 by Susan and Graham Coddington after extensive research into new breeding trends in the Australian sheep industry.

They were looking for a truly shedding, tough, bigger animal with an emphasis on feet, constitution and fertility.
​
After dedicating their whole lives to the stud and commercial Merino and wool industries, Graham was constantly asked what drove me to firstly even consider and then to make the move into, shedding sheep.
​
While the decision was certainly not easy, the two key factors in the Coddington’s thinking were pretty straight forward – economics and lifestyle.

​For quite a few years now, they have seen the turmoil, that surrounds the wool industry and personally cannot see this changing.

Issues around returns, shearing costs, animal health and welfare, labour and input costs combined with the buoyant projections for sheep meat made us seriously look at the long term, sustainability of what we were doing and shedding sheep seemed to tick all the boxes.

How it began

Coddington SheepMaster™ Stud purchased 14 exceptional young special stud SheepMaster ewes for $5,000 per head in August 2022 along with 12 special stud sires at the Elders National SheepMaster ram sale Nov 2022. As well as a line of special CFA stud SheepMaster ewes to form an exceptional foundation flock of 1500 breeding ewes.​

Neil Garnett, SheepMaster founding breeder, believes that Graham, regarded as one of Australia’s Leading merino breeders, has the unique skills and experience to take Coddington SheepMaster to the highest level. Neil and Andrew Hodgson (Shedding Sheep Australia consultant) have visited the stud on a number of occasions and are very excited with the breeding program, which is well underway at the Stud.

The Coddington’s felt that the quality of the SheepMaster silky, 100% shedding skin, body size and structure, is the way forward. They will increase their flock, running over properties in Western NSW and Geurie. They have carried out 3 SheepMaster Embryo Transfer programs.

These lambs are now on the ground and will be available for sale at their first on property SheepMaster sale on 9 February 2024. A large number of commercial rams will be available from February 2024. Cooddington’s will continue with their Stud Merino enterprise at “Gilgai” at Geurie, NSW.

300

SheepMaster Rams sold

150

SheepMaster Ewes sold

Objectives

SheepMaster is a clean shedding, robust, correct maternal breed of sheep that I believe will fundamentally change the Australian Sheep (and cattle) industries.

Key performance criteria for the SheepMaster include:

  • Ewes getting in lamb at seven to eight months of age and then rearing a lamb(s) every eight months.
  • Full shedding due to silky skin type (no shearing, crutching, fly, or lice).

  • Highly fertile with strong maternal traits.

  • Conformation and constitution.
  • Animal Welfare benefits of no tailing or mulesing.
  • SheepMaster ewes running under commercial conditions can go close to weaning their own body weight per annum (I include this as my cattle breeding operation comes no where near this).
  • Are adaptable to all climatic conditions in Australia and internationally.