Elm Southdowns was founded in 2018 with 18 ewes from Fairbank Stud, Tasmania, along with foundation sire Yentrac 16/0421. The stud owners, Charlotte and Stuart Drinnan, use regenerative farming techniques. Their focus is to breed tough sheep that do well on grass and require no extra inputs.

By Andrew Sellars-Jones
The Chandpara Southdown Stud was officially founded in 1988, but its founder, Andrew Sellars-Jones, began breeding Southdowns way back in 1974. Over the years the ewe flock has been kept small, with culling being heavy so as to concentrate on quality. This, in combination with sourcing the best genetics available in Australia and New Zealand via artificial insemination and embryo transfer programs, has resulted in long, leaner sheep with excellent growth rates and muscling.

By Marylyn Stevens
Everything in a living being is centred on reproduction.  There are living beings on earth today because other beings have reproduced with desperate eagerness for two thousand million years or more.
In the simplest sense the term “breeding” means no more than just reproducing, as a result of a sexual union between two living things of a kind.  This is what goes on in the wild, with the environment as the only controlling factor.  In this way nature does only a limited amount of selecting because it is only concerned with reproducing and survival of the fittest.

Story told by Frank Badcock

Fairbank Southdowns started in 1922 you might say as a result of an accident. My father Vern, at the time a young teenager was kicked in the head by a horse and as a result had a plate inserted in his forehead. Advised not to play sport his father suggested a sheep stud. He himself was already a successful breeder of English Leicesters as was his father before him.