1989 Moved to Merinotech
By 1988 the AMS had grown at rapid speed to involve 1,200 farmers running 3,000,000 breeding ewes, with 100 regional Ram Breeding Groups and a 4,000 Central Nucleus.
At the 1988 AMS AGM in Perth where the 300 AMS members present heard a presentation from Dr. Brian Kinghorn & Dr. Robert Banks, that changed the course of the AMS. They put a proposal forward that AMS adopt the use of more advanced breeding tools using full pedigree BLUP EBV’s to aid selection.
As a result of this proposal Jim Shepherd and half the Ram Breeding Groups decided to keep using their current breeding system.
The other half decided to adopt the new breeding system and create a company called Merinotech to supply that genetic service to them. The various ram breeding flocks were to operate under the Merinotech banner.
For many reasons the embryo Merinotech service set up to supply BLUP EBV’s ran into problems and other options were becoming available so this service was stopped.
Most Merinotech ram breeding Nuclei continued under the Merinotech banner, although there has been an evolution down to a much smaller base of very successful groups.
Merinotech WA being good example of this and is operating as three tier system, supplying rams to 50 farmers with 100,000 breeding ewes..
As the breeding objectives of these Merinotech groups were focusing strongly on wool cutters rather than the multi-purpose objective that was so successful in the AMS, Centre Plus decided to become independent of the Merinotech groups.
Centre Plus was under the Merinotech banner for a period, from 1989 to 1993 although continued its own breeding objective and breeding program. We used an obligatory 50 ewes and 2 rams from Merinotech NE to obtain horn stud registration. We have progressed to using 50 ewes from Gum Hill Merino Stud and semen from Leahcim Merino Stud to gain Poll Stud registration.