Prime Lamb: Drought conditions force feeding change at Dorper operation

John and his 89-year-old father Don run 1000 head of Dorpers and have just invested in a supplementary feeding system due to the drought conditions affecting most producers in NSW.

They started Dorpers in 2009 after running Merino wethers in the early 2000s and ventured into cattle, which didn't suit the country.

John and Don primarily run the operation by themselves, getting casual labour in when they need it for specific tasks.

While Dorpers are the Douglas's livestock enterprise, they also do dry land cropping, which is predominantly barley, canola and vetch this year.

When they can get an irrigation allocation they grow some rice as well.

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Mr Douglas is looking at bringing wheat back into the rotation, mainly to help with weed control.

With pastures struggling to come back, Mr Douglas said they were forced to change their thinking when it came to supplementary feeding.

"We haven't needed to in the past," Mr Douglas said.

"But this year with the drought we went out and bought some feeders to help maintain body condition on our ewes.

"I chose to sell grain and buy pellets, and we were supplementary feeding from February until May.

"We gave our ewes a balanced ration and used hay to bulk them up with some roughage.

"Now I think year-in, year-out we will use supplementary feeding as part of our operation to fill in that autumn feed gap."

While Mr Douglas does not have a set lambing time, it is a system that is working for them.

"We have the rams in all year round with a ratio of 50 ewes for each ram," he said.

"This doesn't give us a set lambing time, so we work off size when it comes to weaning and when to sell.

"We wean at around 16 weeks and sell them over the hook at no less than 43kg live weight.

"That gives them a carcase weight of around 22kg.

"We lamb mark at eight weeks and usually we are weaning the lambs we had marked eight weeks earlier.

"It means that we generally have lambs to sell regularly with a birthing percentage of around 160 per cent.

"We try not to sell during the spring flush as we don't get the best price for them then.

"This year, even though the rams were in there, they actually chose not to join.

"I think they know more than us what is going on with the weather.

"I was expecting lambs and they weren't coming.

"They turned up when the other lines started dropping - about two months behind what I expected - and they evened themselves up and lambed all together.

"Ideally we would like to get numbers up to 1200 but due to the conditions, we're not planning on keeping any ewe lambs this year.

"Our ewes are all relative young, including 300 maidens, so we don't really need to replace any.

"We will run with the 1000 again and see how things are in 12 months' time and hopefully we can keep some ewe lambs and get the flock size to 1200 head."

Summer feeding is accomplished primarily by running the Dorpers over the crop stubble and while those paddocks are in crop, the Douglases have others set aside for grazing.

They don't have a strict rotational grazing system, but just work to the conditions.

The Douglases buy black-headed African Durmisa Dorper rams from Dell Dorpers in Moama.

"We get around five or six rams a year from Dell Dorpers," Mr Douglas said.

"We have found they produce good early growth rates and high weaning weights."

Mr Douglas is currently looking at improving his pastures, speaking to an agronomist to find the best solution.

"We need to look at improving our native pastures and may look at fertilising," he said.

"They are predominantly ryegrass and onion grass, and there are some areas which could do with improvement, areas which have never been cropped before.

"And I have other areas which have come out of cropping and are now purely grazing and they certainly could utilise fertiliser.

"I think there is a lot of opportunity for us to improve those areas and improve our stocking rates.

"But with the drought and the budget running pretty tight, it is probably something I have not looked at closely enough."