Our History
Bella Lana stud runs on “Birrell Vale”, 302 Burrel Creek Road, Dripstone which is located 16km south of Wellington, NSW. Our properties consist of 2200 hectares of undulating hills and open valleys, with a pasture mix of native and improved pastures, and some grazing cereals. Our sole focus is our Merino sheep operation, consisting of stud and commercial ewes.
Merinos suit us because of our passion and belief in our sheep and the industry. Bella Lana is very much a family-based enterprise where our daughters, Sarah, Jane and Hannah, show their keenness and have hands-on involvement in the running of the stud.
Bella Lana was founded in 2006 on Wallaloo Park bloodline, and we have used these genetics since 1995. In our very first year as a registered stud, we sold rams at the Classic Ram Sale at Wellington and topped the sale, indicating to us that our breeding objectives were in line with market demand.
In 2008, we purchased ewes from Charlie Massy’s former Severn Park at Cooma, to add to our genetic base. We selected Severn Park ewes for their good eye muscle, fat cover and growth, and also because some of the ewes were true Poll Merinos.
We average 120% lambing. Our average flock micron is 18.7 and our wool cut to 7.5kg a head. We have sheep that are plain bodied and require minimum care and chemicals for flies.
We have found there are so many benefits from running our line of breeding – not least of all is the saving of labour, which is increasingly hard to find. People went out of sheep as they were hard work… not our sheep.
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Our Breeding Objectives
We aim to breed our sheep with the following:
- 4.5 kg of 18.5 micron wool every 6 months
- Length 70 mm
- Weaning 130% of lambs
- Sale of lambs into the trade at 6-9 months at 18-20 kg dressed weight
- Our sheep must be plain bodied to reduce flystrike and to minimise the use of chemicals
- Our sheep are mules free
- Our sheep must perform in our country with minimal to no supplementary feeding
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Upcoming Events 2020
What our customers are saying
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I have a self replacing Merino flock with my mum and dad at Tarcutta. Our ewes are 18 to 18.5 micron and our hoggets are 17 to 17.2 in all years. We have a traditional fine wool block with fine wool types. Back in 2016 we changed our ram source and went to Bella Lana. I had completed some work for them and I was super impressed with the direction they were going in and the way they were achieving their goals. In 2016 I purchased our first rams from Bella Lana and we’ve been super impressed with them ever ... read more
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We started using Bella Lana merino rams 3 years ago for the property I manage, “Gidleigh Station” at Bungendore. We were really chasing extra carcass, growth and weight for age without compromising any of the wonderful wool characteristics of our merino. This dual-purpose type strategy was a risk strategy for us, and we wanted to capitalise on both lamb and wool markets. In these 3 years we have seen an incredible improvement in our sheep, carcass wise without giving up that fine white stylish wool. I was standing in a pen of 10-month-old ewe lambs that were born in the ... read more
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I’ve been buying rams from Bella Lana since 2008, when I started with buying 8 of their rams that year. They’ve got a good wool type and micron count on them. They’re a good type of sheep that suit my country. They’ve got good big frames, plain bodies, and they’ve been breeding true to type – they’re producing the type of sheep that I like to breed. I sold my surplus 1.5-year-old ewes at the Dunedoo Annual Merino Breeders’ Sale in January, 2011, and they well and truly topped the market at $230 a head. The ewes had a major ... read more