About Us
Ridgway Poll Merino Stud is run by Ric, Gail, Matt & Rachel Ridgway at Kulkami, located between Lameroo and Karoonda in South Australia’s Murray Mallee. Our soils are predominately light and sandy and we receive an average rainfall of 350mms.
We continue to select for free-growing, sharp crimping, white wools, with extra emphasis on nourishment, staple length and fibre density which allows progeny to thrive in any environment.
These selection criteria, together with choosing animals with good early growth, positive carcass traits and correct confirmation has resulted in the production of rams that will breed progeny which are both predictable and consistent. A mules-free flock is definitely achievable with the use of Ridgway genetics, due to their plain bodies and low breech wrinkle.
From a total sheep productivity and profitability perspective, we are confident that these are the types that will perform exceptionally well across a total range of environs; as evidenced by our clients who operate from the vast and lower rainfall pastoral areas of South Australia and New South Wales through to 750mm rainfall districts in the southern areas of Australia.
"Ridgway regularly enter rams in Sire Evaluation Trials in Victoria and more recently in the S.A. trials which were run on the Keynes & McMahon family properties. They realize that benchmarking their rams alongside those from other leading South Australian and Interstate studs, provides them with valuable information on how their sires are performing for a range of both measured and classed traits.
The recently released summary of the S.A. 2019 trial run by McPiggery at Marama highlighted the performance of Ridgway 170005 which scored above average in all but one of the 26 measured and classed traits, this being staple length, even though he scored well in the fleece weight categories.
However, it was his results for the measured meat traits that they were particularly pleased with. He scored well for growth, fat and eye muscle, which combined with his figures for wool, ranked him a clear leader for the Dual Purpose index and second best for all other indexes.
He was also a leader for both breech wrinkle and breech cover which are traits that Ridgway believe are consistent in their entire stud and is why they believe that their sheep are well suited to no-mules flocks."
Excerpt Merino Annual - 2021
Our family
Ric, Gail, Matt, Rachel, Josh, Catherine, Taylor, Jess, Olivia, Halle, Indi, Bridie, Owen, Archie & Macy