DORPER sheep are making lamb production a whole lot easier for the McKenzie family in the drier climate of southern NSW.
Tim McKenzie said moving his operation from wool to meat sheep eliminated the stress of finding labour for shearing and lamb marking.
“We were always staunch Merino people, breeding stud rams and the like, but it was just getting too hard to find the labour to get all the husbandry work done,” he said.
“It is a complete change in lifestyle, a lot less stressful and I think the main difference is I find it a lot more enjoyable.”
The McKenzie family now run 10,000 Dorper-Damara sheep on their stations Lochnagar, Belparjah and Wy-Wurie.
Mr McKenzie began trialling Damaras in 2000, after leasing a property near Ivanhoe that needed easier-to-manage stock.
“We bought a few to put on our leased property and we found them easy to manage, so we just got bigger and bigger as we went,” he said.
“It has decreased our labour output no end – trying to find shearers and maintain shearing sheds and infrastructure was just becoming more and more difficult.”
The last of their Merino flock was sold in 2007, and Mr McKenzie says he has a lot more spare time now.
He classes his sheep on their wool shedding capabilities, which gives him more time to mark his lambs without having flystrike concerns.
“We have no fly trouble at all, we do all our own lamb marking and if we don’t get to it this week, we do it the next,” Mr McKenzie said.
To make the workload even easier on his family, Mr McKenzie has recently purchased a Rod Holland Stocklift.
The machine picks up about 25 lambs at once, allowing them to be marked without the heavy lifting.
Previously, the McKenzie’s hired contractors to mark their Dorper lambs, but with the help of the stocklift they are now able to do the work themselves.
It also allows Mr McKenzie to wait until his lambs are older before marking them, reducing the risk of separating them from their mothers.
Mr McKenzie turns out about 13,000 lambs a year to a variety of different markets, averaging about $120 a head for six-month-old lambs weighing in at upwards of 20 kilograms.
He recently sold cull ewes up to seven months-old for $151.60.
“This year’s ripper season has seen us achieve 175 per cent lambing out of Damara-blood ewes,” he said.
“I do have to keep on top of making sure they are joined all the time and I really chase that one and a half lambs a year.
“They are good for this country because they are not carrying all that wool around so they can handle the tougher times.
“There are claims they eat out the country more than other sheep, but because you don’t have to hold on to them for long, you can always sell them and therefore run less sheep.”
Dorpers now surround the McKenzie properties, with many producers in the region turning to the hardy breed.
This saw Mr McKenzie looking for a point of difference in his sheep, so he became organically certified in 2007, opening up new markets for his lambs.
“It’s just the way everything is going, the world is getting healthier and going organic has been really good for us, but not everyone can do it,” he said.
“We have definitely seen an increase in prices, and recently we got $160 a head on-property through AuctionsPlus.”
Mr McKenzie said he didn’t have to make many changes at all to become organic, other then fencing and yard infrastructure, which had to occur regardless.
“There is no need for shearing, crutching or chemicals with the Dorpers anyway, so it has had little effect on our production methods or costs, but has opened up another avenue for selling our sheep,” he said.
“We put a lot of money into fencing, which is now based on hinge jointing and electric strands, but once the infrastructure is in that is the only output.”
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