White Dorper Breeding Objectives
To breed a highly productive and low cost, efficient prime lamb mother,
able to produce an early maturing lamb over a wide range of environments.
To achieve maximum improvement, the number of selection characteristics must be restricted to those absolutely meaningful to profit and sustainable breed performance in and for Australian environments and markets.
We use our own breeding experience and understanding of the White Dorper breed standards to eliminate off types and basic faults so maximum selection pressure can be applied to objectively measured profit driving characteristics - fertility, growth rate and carcass quality.
The introduction of carefully selected Outside Genetics is utilised to support our intensive measured performance based within stud selection.
Haseley White Dorper Breeding Programme
Our concentration has been on taking advantage of the benefits of large numbers of full blood White Dorper ewes and White Dorper rams bred from the 2007 ET programme – over 4,000 White Dorper lambs. This gave us intense selection pressure to select the best White Dorper ewes for our elite special White Dorper ewes and elite rams for use on the whole White Dorper flock.
The stud White Dorper ewe flock is now organized for lambing in April, August and December which necessitates short 3-4 week matings and early 8-12 week weanings. The objective – 3 lambs in 2 years. We expect the White Dorpers to achieve this without supplementary feeding, except for straw or hay.
We have White Dorper ewes lambed down in April on wheat stubbles with no supplementation. A late break may necessitate hay supplement. Short 2 week teasing and flushing with lupins prior to joining may be needed due to the short 3-4 week mating period. The effect of the extra White Dorper lambs with the above programme on profitability is extremely attractive.
As you can see our efforts are being directed at establishing high fertility and therefore production from the White Dorpers’ maternal features. March 2011 has seen for the first time Haseley using only twin born sires within the Special Stud ewe flock on Haseley.
To date the White Dorpers have established their premium carcass superiority for yield and particularly yield of high value cuts, eg viascan performance. Their value as a terminal sire is accepted - we need to demonstrate their major role in the long term as the number one dam for the lamb industry.
| Haseley and Redcliffe White Dorper Characteristics | |
| High Fertility |
Our general flock is on a eight month joining programme and all ewes are expected to be able to achieve this more intensive management practice. Ewes failing to achieve are downgraded. Special Stud flock joined only to Naturally Born Twins in 2011. |
| Constitution |
We have a strong belief that if a ewe can regularly conceive and rear a sound lamb to a satisfactory bodyweight given equal conditions she is showing sound constitution. Therefore by removing ewes that are unable to achieve this from our elite breeding flock it is putting constant pressure on improving our flock's constitution. |
| Conformation | Freedom from physical fault and selection for prime carcass characteristics. |
| Low Cost | A prime feature of the Dorper breed is its low management cost. The ability for the breed to shed is paramount in avoiding flystrike, being affected by lice and eliminating the need to shear. Ewes do not make it into the elite breeding flock without sufficient shedding. They must be very clean shedding over the top of the tail and also over the front of the shoulders. Ewes that are susceptible to scouring are also discarded from all elite groups. |
| Measured Selection | Participation in Lambplan http://www.sheepgenetics.org.au to select and benchmark to industry in excellence. The 5,000 stud full blood ewe flock has given us intense selection pressure to select 600 elite special stud ewes. These ewes have been individually identified for growth rate, muscle, fat and weaning weight. Their lambs are weighed at birth and performance recorded through to point of sale for rams or selection to the stud for ewes. Evaluation of peformance is assisted by use of appropriate indexes. |
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