Welcome to Crawlers Gully Dorper Stud
We are Martin Pye and Eileen Moriarty and we welcome you to our property Riverbourne; home of Crawlers Gully Dorper Stud. We are situated about 8km south of Captains Flat on the headwaters of the Molonglo River, at an elevation of 1000 metres. The property experiences a wide variety of climatic conditions, including snow. Our soils are highly acidic with large areas of Poa tussock & native grasses.
Our stud commenced in January 2004 with the purchase of 21 ewes from Elvamore. These were Springvale ewes of good quality. We followed this with the purchase of 2 Amarula rams and 2 ewes, at their inaugural on-farm sale in February 2004. We later purchased a further 12 typed ewes from Amarula along with a ram from Kaya. The bloodlines are predominantly Tian Jordaan's.
We are very conscious of retaining femininity in our ewes, as well as muscularity and growth in our rams. We feel the most important trait in the commercial field is fertility and we also select for fecundity. Ultimately, it is the commercial producer who must be the prime focus, and this means our goal must be to wean the maximum number of kilos per hectare grazed. Thus the 55kg ewe who weans 40kg of lamb is more profitable than a 70kg ewe weaning the same!
In July 2008 we purchased some 3rd and 4th cross commercial dorper ewes which have been running on a leased property adjacent to Lake Eucumbene. Though conditions have been harsh, the sheep did well and all our October lambs were sold quickly confirming our excitement about the breed and it's potential.
In 2009 we purchased another property so we could expand the stud to over 200 full blood ewes, we did this to expand the diversity of the genetics and refine our breeding towards a sheep that thrived in the Southern Tablelands. In September 2009 we purchased three new stud rams from Amarula and Winrae Stud in Northern NSW. The first lambs from these rams were born in mid 2010 and are ready for sale in early 2011. We have been performance recording since the commencement of the stud, and use Lambplan in conjunction with the South African point system for continual improvement in stock quality.
2010 also brought about a genetic leap forward and we have imported bloodlines from the renowned Jannie Visagie and Koenie Kotze Studs in South Africa. These embryos are now live lambs and we are delighted with their quality. They will be used to breed our next generation of lambs, and we feel very lucky to have acquired these genetics.
The first of these genetics will be presented at our production sale on 19th January 2013 at Goulburn.
Our South African inspection in November 2012 resulted in seven of these rams being tagged as stud quality, so we are pleased to be making progress with our breeding.