About Waverley Downs
Waverley Downs Merino Stud was founded in 1985 by Kevin and Jane Leader based on Merryville Bloodlines, using stud ewes from Bocoble Stud, Mudgee and Westvale Stud, Wollun and a stud sire from Merryville Stud Boorowa.
The poll stud was registered in October 1992, using Waverley Downs bred ewes and poll sires from Emu Hill, Inverell.
Waverley Downs Merino Stud was purchased from Kevin and Jane Leader in October 1998 by Sean and Judith Ballinger.
Blood Lines
Breeding Objectives
The Waverley Downs Horn Merino stud is based on Merryville genetics.
Some of the early rams introduced were from Bocoble and Wurrook followed by Langdene while consistently using our own top performing rams and rams purchased from Merriville.
​
The Poll Stud was based on Emu Hill and Quamby Park Blood lines we then changed the focus of the polls to improve staple length and have plainer bodies so rams from Well Gully were introduced followed by Glenlea Park and more recently Hamilton Run genetics.
Our main focus is breading productive merino sheep. The main profit drivers being fleece weight and quality as well as weaning percentages. We also put a lot of emphasis structure and ease of care with a zero tolerance of flystrike and fleece rot.
We are always striving to improve the frame size and bone structure of our sheep a long with wool style and softness.
We also select for fertility and maternal instincts.
Performance
Waverley Downs has been especially focused on the real profit drivers for many years with those being kgs of wool/head, lambs weaned per ewe and body weight. We continue to select for frame size, good bone structure, wool softness and style.
We have also paid a lot of attention to ewe maternal instincts which has led to exceptional fertility rates. We are now culling any ewe that doesn’t raise a lamb. With the use of our sheep management software and DNA parentage we are able to track the performance of each ewe every year and look at how many lambs she raised alongside fleece weight and quality to identify the under performing sheep as well as the top performers. We believe this combined with careful sire selection and evaluation using the same system to look at the performance each sire’s progeny we are pushing the profitability of our bloodline higher every year. This is showing with real results, our stud ewes in 2025 had an outstanding marking percentage of 132.7% to ewes joined. Our overall stud and commercial sheep marking percentage was 118% up from 2024s 114%. Our stud ewes that raised at least 1 lamb in 2025 averaged over 6kg of wool and 1.47 lambs raised.
This years rams come with Merino Select ASBVs we are very confident in our raw data and DNA pedigrees and we are working to get all this data into sheep genetics correctly, once all our data and pedigrees are live in sheep genetics we will see an increase in the accuracy of the breeding values and we will continue to strive to provide quality and accurate breeding values and raw data for our clients.