Dorpers, a South African sheep breed from the Dorset Horn and Persian Black Head sheep, could change farming practices, eliminate shearing, and clear rough growth around the farm. These English bull terriers of the sheep world are muscle bound meat machines, which importer and breeder Pete Davison of Seddon jokingly described as a "handleable goats, if there is such a thing, with loyalty written all over their stomachs."
Also described as the ultimate mutton breed for New Zealand, the hardy Dorper is a non-selective grazer that produces lots of milk and is very protective of it's lambs, which can be up to 6kg at birth. They naturally shed their own hairy wool when triggered by day length in the spring, thus minimising flystrike risk and making shearing a thing of the past, a clear benefit for lifestyle blocks and small farmlets which may prefer a low maintenance animal. They produce a quality skin suitable for upholstery, fashion boots and leather garments.
Dorpers are a high fertility animal capable of two lambings per year and quite frequently twins, with up to 225% lambing per annum. They have an even fat distribution and superb feed conversion with good weight gain. Imported via Australia, where they achieved a seven week weight of 28.1kg from a birth weight of 5.750kg, they have demonstrated an average weight gain of 0.4536kg a day. Twin lambs which each weighed 4kg at birth, were 8kg at one week.
"It would appear that 500gms a day seems a conservative estimate, in Queenstown a farmer claims 600gms per day from Dorper Texel cross and at 60 days they were still producing 600gms per day, but that's on excellent pasture," Pete added.
A forth generation Canterbury fat lamb farmer from the Rakaia district where he ran Poll Dorset Border ewes on a farm at Dunsandel, Pete Davison now farms a small block of 80 acres at Clifton Bay, Marlborough. Following up an advertisement in a rural paper last year, he joined a group of ten local farmers that were very interested in the sheep breed, and which met with David Thorn of Bulbarli Stud, Western Australia.
"A lot of people are waiting out to see what happens, but three of us decided to get some sheep because there is no substitute for experience with a breed, you can look over the fence, but in the final analysis you actually have to have the sheep on the ground."
The three farmers imported 21 ewes and 4 rams from the Bulbarli Stud in November 2000, and in late February intend to harvest embryos from the ewes for insemination into recipient East Friesian/Border Leicester ewes. In the meantime, semen straws are available at $30 each.
Pete Davison is also a member of the Awatere Fair committee and will be present at the fair this year on Sunday the 4th of March 2001.
