The sale coincides with the 50th anniversary of the stud, but it will also be the last year under the current ownership, as Mr Stevens and his wife, Deb, have decided to move on from farming and are looking for new opportunities.
However, they wanted to keep the stud intact and, rather than hold a dispersal sale, hoped to sell the stud locally, either with their farm — which is on the market — as a going concern, or to another buyer.
The stud was established by Mrs Stevens’ father, George Paterson, the Paterson family having looked for a terminal sire to go over their halfbred ewes and experimented with various breeds before settling on Poll Dorsets.
Mr Paterson had spent time working in Canterbury and knew George Lowe from the Windermere stud, near Ashburton, and the stud was founded on the purchase of 10 ewes from T. P. Lowe and Co. Originally the prefix was Armidale, but two years later it was changed to Cairnlea.
Mr and Mrs Stevens, who are both teachers, took it over in 2004, even though Mr Stevens knew "absolutely nothing at all" about stud-sheep breeding. They had returned from overseas and, having both grown up on farms, their original plan was to teach while running a sheep stud on a hobby farm as a sideline.
Acknowledging he was "extremely naive", Mr Stevens said he liked the idea of the recording side of stud breeding and he had also seen the kick that friends’ fathers with studs got out of sheep breeding.
At that stage, he had not given any thought to what breed he would like to run but, when his in-laws, George and Kathryn, decided they wanted to exit stud breeding and there was a discussion about what would happen to their sheep, the young couple put their hands up.
At that stage, they were both teaching in Invercargill and, with the sale of the Patersons’ property, the stud was in limbo, the sheep farmed out across the Paterson brothers.
Mr and Mrs Stevens bought their Poolburn farm in 2003 and while Mr Stevens had no experience of Poll Dorsets, it seemed a good idea to take on an established stud. Growing up in Southland, he was used to Romneys, and terminal sires were also a new aspect for him.
Over the ensuing years, Mr Paterson kept a strong interest in the stud and Mr Stevens said everything he learned about stud breeding essentially started from him.
"George is a hell of a stockman. There was always the emphasis, right from the start, on conformation. Those real basics were drummed into me right from the start," he said.
Kathryn Paterson had kept all the stud breeding records on paper and 20-odd years of lambing data were dropped off to Sheep Improvement Ltd (SIL) to be uploaded. Now data recording was done via EID tags.
Mr Stevens praised their SIL technician Julia Aspinall, who had been with them from the start, and who had been invaluable to the stud’s genetic progress.
Initially they found their best looking and biggest rams did not match up as their top ones on SIL figures. After several years linking everything in and developing a breeding programme focused on growth and eye muscle, they started to line up.
It was pleasing to see that syncing, as they knew their top performing animals on farm were genetically sound as well, with 50 years of recording behind them.
An out-cross of Australian blood had added another dimension to the stud. In 2020, they imported some semen from the Gooramma stud in New South Wales, which gave them a real boost with eye muscle and a much needed out-cross. The biggest genetic pool for any terminal breed in Australasia was the Poll Dorset because there were so many Poll Dorsets in Australia, he said.
Last year, Mr and Mrs Stevens, and Wilkins Farming, in Southland, bought another Gooramma ram in conjunction with Esther Glasgow from the ESTJAM stud in Australia.
The ram was a son of Valma "Lyle", which was sold by Andrew and Caroline McLaughlan, of the Valma stud in northern Tasmania, for what was an Australian record price of $41,000 in 2021.
The studs were chasing a high intramuscular fat score, an attribute which the Australians had been on to for longer and which was starting to come to New Zealand with a focus on eating quality. The ram remained in Australia with semen dispatched to New Zealand and his first crop of lambs were on the ground.
After first buying the Cairnlea stud, the Stevens sold rams privately, but they also discovered that a lot of Mr Paterson’s clients were very loyal to him. They were in a different area and they found they had to start rebuilding.
They were now preparing for their 17th on-farm ram sale and the move to holding a sale provided an opportunity for new clients to have a crack at the top sheep on offer.
At their first sale, Mr Stevens recalled how the rams were not a very even line. While the top ones were good, there was a "bit of a tail end" and they realised they needed a much more even line.
The farm had to be better and they looked to improve irrigation and pasture species on the property to finish their rams better and, since then, they have been able to produce much more even sheep, he said.
Mr Stevens enjoyed working with Poll Dorsets — apart from shearing them, he quipped — and found them to be quite clever in the paddock. The ewes were "fantastic mothers" and, with plenty of milk, that meant good growth rates. They also loved the dry conditions and would give everything they could to their lambs.
He recently enjoyed judging Poll Dorsets at the New Zealand Agricultural Show in Christchurch, saying it was a real honour to be asked to officiate. It was a very well run show and it provided a good catch up for breeders and a line up of quality sheep.
When the Cairnlea stud was sold, all the data would be available to be used and built upon.
"There’s still room for growth in the stud. I’m not leaving [it] finished," he said.
The final Cairnlea sale, run by Rural Livestock, would feature 81 rams, including a selection of Poll Dorset-Suffolk cross.
