Commercial Sheep

We have bred a very good line of shedding sheep that can produce premium lambs in our environment and finish them on extensive native pastures. We need a ewe that can lamb and get back in lamb at any time of the year so we can maximize production and take advantage of varying seasonal rainfall. Carcass quality is very important and as we now have a good line of maintenance free ewes we can put a greater emphasis on carcass quality and growth rates.

We are getting better than 150% lambs a year with rams in all the time. This allows us to increase selection pressure and also have good quality young ewes for sale at various times of the year.

Having tried various breeds of breeding through to pure Dorper we have found there are pro's and con's of all of them. With other sheeding breeds like the Damara and Van Rooy the downfall is carcass quality. It can take 2 or 3 crosses to get the carcass right and while you are doing it the lambs are in many cases worth less than Merinos and should not be sold at markets. Breeding from a Merino or British breed base has maitenance costs associated but a premium carcass can be produced from the start.