Kings crowned Supreme Champion Fleece winners of the Perth Royal Show

Darkan’s Jeremy and Melinda King are continuing their wildly successful run at this year’s sheep and wool show circuit after scooping the Supreme Champion Fleece award with a fine wool fleece judges simply could not ignore.

The Rangeview Merino Stud fleece was announced winners of the tightly contested competition on Monday, September 18, ahead of this year’s Perth Royal Show from September 23 to 30 where the fleece will be on display.

The Kings’ fleece scored 93 points out of a possible 100, with second-place getter Stuart Rintoul of medium wool stud Dongiemon stud at Williams scoring 90 points.

It is the third top prize the Kings have received this year after taking out two supreme titles — one at Wagin Woolorama in March, and a second at the Williams Gateway Expo in April.

Rangeview stud principal Jeremy King said the latest winner was a fine wool fleece that came off a two-year-old ram set to be sold next month at the stud’s October 13 on-farm ram sale.

“We’ve had three supreme fleece awards in a year — we haven’t done that before,” Mr King said.

“It’s been great, especially winning with a different sheep — it’s a feather in the cap for the stud.”

He said the “great show season” had given them confidence to continue the hard work required to run the stud, which was a side of the business that he “enjoyed the most”.

Mr King put up two ram fleeces and one ewe fleece for the Perth Royal Show competition, which were “all good quality fleeces”.

“I’m glad one won supreme,” Mr King said.

He said the stud was focused on producing a “better style, high yielding fleece type” that the trade wanted to buy.

Mr Chapman said the fleece test results were “excellent” and the winner won by “only two points”.

“The two top fleeces were very similar but the runner-up didn’t quite have the evenness of the winner,” Mr Chapman said.

“It won because of its evenness, styling and handling.

“The industry loves a wool that is very soft to handle that can be used for fabrics — they are keenly sought after by top fabric makers.”

Mr Chapman said the fleece tested 19 micron, weighing 8.8kg with a CV of 15 per cent, a comfort factor of 99.7 per cent, a strength of 58 Newtons per kilotex and a yield of 79 per cent.

It scored 10 out of 10 for its evenness and handling and four out of five for its colour.

Mr Chapman said the ram should fetch some keen interest when it is sold next month.

“The wool has come off an excellent sheep and it should get very good support because of those genes,” he said.

The popular competition made a triumphant return last year after two years of COVID-19-induced pauses, with the Rintoul family’s Auburn Valley Stud taking the honour in a close competition.

The field of 70 fleeces represented about half the number of fleeces entered in the competition pre-COVID.