Dillidorper History

Stud Name: Dillidorper Stud

Prefix: Dillidorper

Flock Number: 5

In 1996 Cashdown purchased some of the first embryos released for sale in Australia. These embryos were implanted into some of our stud Wiltshire Horn ewes. We were so impressed with the Dorpers, that we purchased more embryos in 2000 to add to our numbers. Even though the black head Dorper is the predominant Strain in South Africa we also purchased some White Dorper embryos as we wanted to compare the two types of Dorpers under our conditions, we found that the Black Headed Dorper performed better. As our meat buyers didn't seem to mind if the lambs were black or white (they paid more for the bigger animals), we quit our White Dorpers to concentrate upon breeding superior Black Headed Dorpers.

Characteristics which we are currently placing selection pressure upon are:

• Long,well muscled body
• Good shedding characteristics
• No foot trimming (good conformation)

So we can select the best easy care animals we don't foot trim or shear. As the Dorper show standard mandates the shearing of animals, and careful foot trimming can be used to hide faults we don't show our animals.

In Autumn 2004 we carried out an AI program on our ewes with semen from Amarula 02-0244. As a result we had some magnificent lambs on the ground.

In 2007 we purchased Newstead Mulga Bill and introduced him into our flock as our new stud sire. He is a fully shedding, long bodied and well muscelled ram with sound feet and legs. Mulga Bill was used over both our fullblood flock and the ewes that we had upgraded from our Stud Wiltshire flock. He had a busy year in 2008, after finishing in one ewe flock he was moved onto another, so that over his first 12 months with us he covered all of our ewes at least once.