Damaras! My two cent's worth anyway.
I've had goats and intend to get more but man, can they be destructive! Great pets, great livestock. But for a less destructive browser, Damaras are great.
The sheep in my avatar is a damara. She's just growing our her winter wool now, that's an old pic in the avatar. They're a self-shedding hair sheep from South Africa, Namibia. But they're gaining popularity in Australia and other countries. The South Africans have a saying: 'Two baboons kill a leopard, two damaras kill a baboon.' Certainly my lamb spends enough time tricking and feinting at the dog so she can plant her skull and all her weight behind it into his foolishly opened mouth. He's learnt to keep his mouth closed around her.
Damaras are browsers, not grazers (unless forced to), and good weed killers, with the eating habits of the goat except not as destructive. They love toxic plants. My ewe won't eat grass at all. They tend to run like deer, with the back legs powering and the front legs striding. While they're desert sheep, they manage quite well in snowy and tropical areas too.
If you have a couple of rams they will manage to defend a flock against dog attack, even the babies will instinctively stalk and corner and attack if they think that's what you or the flock is doing. Mine has Hall Damara genetics which are some of the best I've seen. I think the future market for meat sheep will be very strongly represented by Damaras. They are often crossed with Dorpers, both here and in Africa, for the market, and they call the resulting offspring 'Meatmasters'. I don't know of any other sheep that grows like a damara, we call them 'exponential sheep' and 'fluffy maggots'. They grow like them anyway!
Damaras are eating a lot of vegetation by their second week, tend to double size every week for the first few weeks and are born so tiny and quickly it's blink and you miss it, it's literally that fast. They're extremely hardy with a very affectionate and flock-oriented mentality, not known for fence breaking or jumping. Their leather is beautifully patterned and glove quality, and their meat is very high quality and has no muttony taste. The mothers are great mothers and don't need assistance. The ewes can rear a lamb from the fat stored in their tails if the food supply suddenly fails. The fat in their tails is instantly renderable. They're great sheep and livestock and I'm hoping to breed my lamb when she's of age, and in future use them to guard my poultry and other livestock. They are often run with cattle as they don't compete for the feed and are quite complimentary companion livestock. They make devoted pets, too, and are quite smart. They represent one of the oldest, purest, strongest gene pools of all ovines left in the world. That said, it's hard to tell a mix breed as the damara genetics dominate so thoroughly.
Hope you at least consider them, and if you do I hope you get a good herd and they serve you well. I'm certainly a big fan of them.
I've had goats and intend to get more but man, can they be destructive! Great pets, great livestock. But for a less destructive browser, Damaras are great.
The sheep in my avatar is a damara. She's just growing our her winter wool now, that's an old pic in the avatar. They're a self-shedding hair sheep from South Africa, Namibia. But they're gaining popularity in Australia and other countries. The South Africans have a saying: 'Two baboons kill a leopard, two damaras kill a baboon.' Certainly my lamb spends enough time tricking and feinting at the dog so she can plant her skull and all her weight behind it into his foolishly opened mouth. He's learnt to keep his mouth closed around her.
Damaras are browsers, not grazers (unless forced to), and good weed killers, with the eating habits of the goat except not as destructive. They love toxic plants. My ewe won't eat grass at all. They tend to run like deer, with the back legs powering and the front legs striding. While they're desert sheep, they manage quite well in snowy and tropical areas too.
If you have a couple of rams they will manage to defend a flock against dog attack, even the babies will instinctively stalk and corner and attack if they think that's what you or the flock is doing. Mine has Hall Damara genetics which are some of the best I've seen. I think the future market for meat sheep will be very strongly represented by Damaras. They are often crossed with Dorpers, both here and in Africa, for the market, and they call the resulting offspring 'Meatmasters'. I don't know of any other sheep that grows like a damara, we call them 'exponential sheep' and 'fluffy maggots'. They grow like them anyway!
Damaras are eating a lot of vegetation by their second week, tend to double size every week for the first few weeks and are born so tiny and quickly it's blink and you miss it, it's literally that fast. They're extremely hardy with a very affectionate and flock-oriented mentality, not known for fence breaking or jumping. Their leather is beautifully patterned and glove quality, and their meat is very high quality and has no muttony taste. The mothers are great mothers and don't need assistance. The ewes can rear a lamb from the fat stored in their tails if the food supply suddenly fails. The fat in their tails is instantly renderable. They're great sheep and livestock and I'm hoping to breed my lamb when she's of age, and in future use them to guard my poultry and other livestock. They are often run with cattle as they don't compete for the feed and are quite complimentary companion livestock. They make devoted pets, too, and are quite smart. They represent one of the oldest, purest, strongest gene pools of all ovines left in the world. That said, it's hard to tell a mix breed as the damara genetics dominate so thoroughly.
Hope you at least consider them, and if you do I hope you get a good herd and they serve you well. I'm certainly a big fan of them.
