Marong sheep farmers take home Melbourne Show ewe and ram prizes

Not to ram the point home, but the Marong-based Brown family are woolly good when it comes to breeding sheep.

Paul and Kara Brown breed rams to sell on to commercial breeders to produce prime lambs.

They took some of their cuddliest members down to the Melbourne Show, which ran from Thursday to Sunday, and came back an impressive array of prizes.

The Marong farmers came home with the grand champion Poll Dorset ewe, junior champion Poll Dorset ram, reserve junior champion Poll Dorset ram, most successful ram exhibitor and most successful Poll Dorset exhibitor, with Paul a well-experienced show attendee.

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"I haven't missed a show for probably 21 years," Mr Brown said.

"It would have been 23 years, but there were those two years with no show."

Mr Brown takes the best of his 450 strong Poll Dorset herd to compete, with the meat sheep judged on their carcass size.

"We've probably had six or seven [years] as most successful exhibitors," he said.

And the flock are continually improving with their prize ewe taking home reserve champion at the Bendigo Sheep and Wool show in July - before going one better at the recent Melbourne competition.

"There weren't as many people there this year as there have been in previous years but there were a lot of different circumstances," he said.

Mr Brown said as farmers schedule their ram sales, some had clashed with the show which explained some of the smaller turnout.

He has his own sale planned for Friday and said he hopes the rain can hold back - not that it will stop the farmers.

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