Aims

Our commercial sheep are purely for meat production, “we need to get as many lambs into the market with as few inputs as possible and as quickly as we can”. Our aim is to have breeding ewes that can rear a good lamb every 8 months and continue to get back into lamb. The lambs should be able to finish on natural paddock feed except in exceptional circumstances. We are breeding through from Merino and Damara ewes and are getting good results for different reasons from each group.

The White Dorper/Merino crosses are accepted as cross bred lambs without any fuss and because they are white the upgrade ewes sell very well as breeders. The downside of these is the cost of maintenance as we breed through. As first and second crosses they still require most of the attention that a Merino needs but the wool returns are a lot less.

Our Damara ewes are in most cases killed as cross bred lambs on the same gird as any others but the colour in the skins means that the skin market is limited. It takes a similar amount of crosses to take the wool off the Merino as it does to take the colour out of the Damara but the maintenance costs are a lot less as we go through. The Damara cross ewes also have the added advantage of being exceptional mothers and can rear great lambs when feed is limited.