Dorper

The cross was the work of the South African Department of Agriculture, aimed at a meat sheep that could thrive where wool breeds failed. The Dorper Sheep Breeders Society of South Africa was established in 1950, and the breed became the second most common sheep in that country. Its genetics have since gone into other breeds, including the Australian White.

They are hair sheep that shed, black headed on a white body, and they grow fast: under good conditions a lamb can reach about 79 lb in 100 days. Lambing percentages around 150 percent are typical in South Africa.

The coat is a short, light mix of wool and hair that sheds in late spring and summer, and the thick skin is itself a product, marketed for leather under the Cape Glovers name.

The American Dorper Sheep Breeders' Society describes the ewes as excellent mothers and heavy milkers, with vigorous lambs that survive well.

Most Dorpers are polled, but many rams carry scurs and some grow horns; the society's experience is that horned rams tend to be more masculine, with a stronger libido. Susan Schoenian's Maryland Small Ruminant Page, writing about hair sheep including the Dorper, notes that hair sheep breeds lack the flocking instinct of fine-wool sheep.

Meat, in heat and drought. Dorper lambs reach market weight quickly on forage that would not finish a wool breed. They are non-seasonal breeders and the ewes are hardy and low maintenance.

Less than a wool breed: no shearing, no crutching, no mulesing, and less flystrike risk. The trade is fat and shedding. Dorpers lay down fat earlier than most breeds, so they need finishing watched or the carcass is over-fat, and shedding is less complete in some lines and some climates, which leaves an animal needing shearing after all.

Ask to see how the line actually sheds in your kind of climate, because incomplete shedding quietly puts the shearing bill back on you. And plan the finish: the early fat means the growth curve, not the calendar, decides slaughter timing.

The American Dorper Sheep Breeders' Society is the US registry, and it registers both the blackheaded Dorper and the all-white White Dorper, so know which you are buying.

Recent sale prices on HoofnHorn, where there are any, are further down this page.