Champion sheep breeder Jim Sidey fleeces the competition

Photo / David Hill

Jim Sidey was back in the winner's circle at the New Zealand Agricultural Show.

After taking a year off to judge at last year's show, the North Canterbury farmer returned as an exhibitor this month to claim supreme champion wool sheep with a 2-year-old Corriedale ram.

Sidey had won supreme champion Corriedale for 11 years in succession before last year's show and supreme champion wool sheep five times.

''There is no secret. The sheep do it themselves. It really comes back to genetics. I am the fifth generation breeding Corriedales.''

Sidey's great-great-grandfather, James Little, is believed to have been the original Corriedale breeder and started out while managing Corriedale Station in North Otago in the 1860s.

Jim Sidey was pleased to win supreme champion wool sheep. Photo / David Hill

He said the Corriedale was resurgent, after bouncing back quickly from North Canterbury's recent drought, with the wool price being $10 a kilogram.

''The lambs are good and our lambing percentage was 162 per cent this season''.

Sidey and his wife, Ramona, run a 330ha farm at Waikari, northwest of Amberley, with 700 stud ewes at the Strathblane Corriedale Stud.

About 170 rams were sold each year to farmers from Marlborough to North Otago and rams have been sold to South America in the past.

Sidey said he already has progeny from the champion ram, after mating him with 120 ewes earlier this year.

The ram's semen has recently been exported to South America.

- Central Rural Life