White Dorper Sheep
The White Dorper sheep has a fleece of hair/wool mix which is shed once a year making shearing unnecessary and reducing the likelihood of blowfly and giving a high tolerance to internal and external parasites. The skin is capable of producing a very high quality leather.
Why White Dorpers
Developed from the Dorset Horn and the Persian Blackhead, the Dorper is a hair sheep originally developed to survive the arid climate and extreme temperatures of South Africa. In addition to their hardiness and non selective grazing habits, they have many other advantages over breeds more familiar to Great Britain.
They have a very early maturing rate. Ewes can be bred starting at 7 months and rams can breed from 4 months. As they can breed all year round, lambing intervals can be every 8 months thus providing potentially 3 lamb crops every 2 years.
Dorper lambs can reach slaughter weight in 12 to 14 weeks. The carcass is well proportioned producing a lean meat which is very mild in flavour.
Due to their hardiness, lamb mortality is low and they are able to thrive in marginal conditions.
As the ewes have very well developed udders with very little wool cover the lambs have no difficulty suckling and are on their feet quickly.
About Our White Dorpers
Since the introduction of the single farm payments it became evident to us that there would be a demand for an easy care sheep to eat surplus grass either on their own or alongside ponies to keep paddocks tidy. As we considered wool to be a big drawback for this kind of market we decided that in the future sheep would have to be capable of shedding it on their own.
Having done a great deal of research, we decided that the Dorper would be a strong contender. Initially bred in South Africa they are now expanding rapidly over the world, especially in Canada and America. The fact that they could live on rough grass and weeds as browsers rather than being selective also appealed to us.
Our decision to go for white Dorpers rather than black was based on the fact that we would also like to cross the breed with the Lleyns, hopefully to improve conformation.
After much searching we eventually located 24 embryos in New Zealand, which we imported and transplanted into Lleyn ewes.
From their arrival in May 2005, our small flock of White Dorpers settled happily into the Scottish climate. From an average birth weight of 4.1kgs, they rapidly gained weight to achieve an average weaning weight of 45.4kgs by 4 months of age.
In September 2005, we had all fifteen Scrapie tested which returned a result of ARR/ARQ (Group 2) across the flock.
Current & Future Developements
Our main aim is to increase the size of our flock of White Dorpers whilst maintaining and promoting its quality.
We hope shortly to be in a position to offer top quality White Dorper semen and embryos for sale on both national and international markets as interest in the breed grows.
We are currently closely monitoring the success of the cross breeding of the White Dorper with the pure bred Lleyn to assess the inherent qualities of the combination. This breeding programme will continue into the future.
