Meet the Chalkers

Photographer: Elena Chalker

Four-year-old Joe Chalker is slumped over an old chair next to a bale of wool. He’s gently sucking his thumb, oblivious to the flurry of activity around him.

Words: Jessica Howard, Photography: Elena Chalker

It’s shearing time at Lach River Merino Stud near Cowra in central New South Wales, and that means all hands on deck, even little ones that still need an afternoon nap. 

“We moved shearing to January to reduce fleece contamination,” Brad Chalker explains. “We used to shear in April, but with the good seasons, there were a lot of burrs in the wool.” 

So no one dares complain when temperatures hit 40 degrees, they just shed layers of clothing and keep working. They’re all there because it rained. 

After more than four decades working in the wool industry, the Chalker family started its stud in 2012, In 2018, they were thrown into one of the worst droughts on record. “It was desperate,” Brad admits. “By the end, we were buying 40-50 tonnes of grain a week, spending up to $20 thousand. A lot of people in the district sold their stock.” 

But the big dry broke, and now the Chalkers are concentrating on what they’re most passionate about: exceptional breeding and wool quality. In their flock of 22-thousand merinos, they aim to produce medium to strong wool with a fibre diameter of around 20 microns.

It’s an incredibly specific target. To give you a sense of just how specific - a micron is a measurement of one-millionth of a metre. Fine wool is 18.6 to 19.5 microns, medium is 20.6-22.5 and strong wool is 22.6 microns and over. Human hair is around 70 microns.

“We went into the medium and strong wool market because the sheep are bigger and sturdier. Their fleeces are bigger too, around 7 kilograms.” A fleece weighed just 1.5-2 kilograms when merinos were introduced to Australia in the late 1700s.

Merino wool is a true wonder fibre. Typically, the smaller the micron, the softer it is. Wool is fire, stain and odour resistant - and keeps you warm in winter and cool in summer thanks to pockets inside the fibre that trap and circulate air. 

“A lot of people aren’t breeding the strong wool anymore," according to Brad. "There’s no 24-25 micron wool now, whereas 20 years ago, everyone was producing it. The whole average clip of Australia is about 18.5 microns.” So if it feels like wool is getting softer, that’s because it is.

“Our kids all have their favourite wool jumpers,” says Elena Chalker, of Harper (9), Harry (7) and Joe (4). “And they’re all completely sheep mad.” Elena is a skilled photographer, and the children regularly appear on her Instagram account - usually chasing sheep or deep in the action of the sheds.

 “I’m raising three really capable little people who love working on the farm," she says. "If we need to draft a mob of sheep, they know exactly what to do, which pens to empty, which gates to open and close. It makes me very proud.”

Producers like the Chalkers go to a lot of trouble to ensure the consistency of their wool clip, in a process that begins long before lambs are born. “When we started our stud, we looked for a ram that had all the attributes that we wanted in our sheep, like heavy wool and a big carcass,” explains Brad. “We found all that in Calendar. He was Australian Ram of the Year in 2012, and he cut 19 kilograms of 22.3 micron wool.”

That year, they artificially inseminated (AI) 400 of their best ewes to Calendar - forming the basis of their flock. The Chalkers still use AI to cross their top rams and best ewes.

“Every year, a sheep classer comes to the stud, and we go through all our ewes and pick out all the heavier wool sheep, those with plenty of body. Structure is one of the main things we look for. You want your sheep big and square, which helps when they’re lambing.”

In the last couple of years, the Chalkers have had another tool to help with their selective breeding program: data. 

Electronic tags are placed in a lamb’s ears when they're eight weeks old, and go on to store information about weight and fleece at key points in the animal’s lives. “We can follow a ewe for for six years and track everything that she breeds,” says Brad. “So if we can see that one year she’s bred a good ram, we’ll harvest her eggs and use them to breed eight good rams.”

It's been an important innovation for the Chalker operation; meaning less guessing, and more precision. But according to Brad, the data is not infallible: “Our biggest thing is you still have to get a solid visual. The animal’s got to look good in terms of its structure and fleece otherwise the data is useless.” 

Lach River Stud sells between 80 and 90 rams at its annual sale, and produces up to 600 bales of wool throughout the year. It will be about 18 months before those fleeces make it onto shelves as suits, jumpers, and outdoor wear, by way of processing plants in China.

"I hope that my photography helps provide the link between what people are wearing and what we do here," says Elena.  "I think it's really important to educate people that we're a family and we're working hard and trying to do the right thing."

There will be more bumps as the stud faces climate and market headwinds, but the Chalkers say they're keen to grow slow and steady, so there's a sizeable enough operation to pass onto the children.

"It would be nice to know they'd be happy taking over the family farm. Every day you try and better what you have for when they take over - and the way we're going, all three are going to want to come back here."

“Joe is really into shearing...” Elena begins, just as he pipes up in the background, asking when our interview will be over. Listening to Mum talk about sheep doesn’t compare to being among them in the shed that he can tantalizingly see from the car.

This story appears in Vol. 01 of Bush Journal.

Elena Chalker is a photographer and wool producer from Cowra, New South Wales.