The Gill family has been producing superfine and ultra fine wool from a Saxon background for over 100 years. The natural environmental and climatic conditions of the New England area allow the production of this magnificent fibre to a quality that is not able to be produced anywhere else in the world.

Without sacrificing our genetic background and wool style (70-74s or finer), we have sought to increase the size of our sheep to enable greater productivity both in wool and carcase.

The Gienna wool objective is to produce a denser, more defined crimping fibre that is long, strong, bright and stylish with superb handle. This is being achieved through a combination of visual classing using SRS® breeding principles, backed up by objective measurements, including the use of ASBVs (Australian Sheep Breeding Values).

Our wool clip has been rewarded with a sale topping price of 20,400 cents achieved for a 14.2 micron 2 bale line at the October 2006 Newcastle sale and sold to the Italian company Loro Piana.

Since 2004, through producing a plainer bodied merino, we only had to light mules less than 10% of our flock. From 2007, no animal on Brookmount has been mulesed.

Shearing

At shearing the focus of our clip is on visual style and quality. Test results and in-shed testing may be used but it is mostly used as a tool for classing. As our fleece lines evolve from a traditional 80/90s style fine crimping wool to a deeper crimping 74s style, this emphasis on visual classing becomes more important to maintain the evenness of lines.

For the last 2 years our entire clip for both the hoggets and the adults has been within 1 micron from the broadest to the finest lines (including the skirtings etc). Because of the plainer bodies, our necks bring as much as our fleece lines!

All sheep are crutched within two months of shearing to eliminate dark fibre contamination (stain). Fleeces are double skirted to increase the quality of the end product.

Flock Averages

Fibre Diameter (5 year)

Adults: 16.6

Hoggets: 15.4

Fibre Diameter 2009

Adults: 16.1

Hoggets 14.4