WITH a production philosophy aimed at ensuring stock suit the climate and terrain in which they run, Clare and David Paterson have made the transition from Merinos to meat sheep.
Located 100 kilometres south of Longreach, Qld, at Kaloola Station, the Paterson family have introduced White Dorpers and Australian Whites to their operation.
They run 7000 White Dorper breeding ewes and 100 head of crossbred cattle across their combined 41,682 hectares between four properties. But they can have up to 12,000 head on farm at any time with lambs, according to Mrs Paterson.
Tattykeel rams are solely used on farm, with the belief that "the Australian Whites add a more calming approach".
After becoming independent from Mr Paterson's family in 2000, they had sheep, cattle, Merinos, and goats but concluded their pocket of land is much better suited to sheep.
The original Dorpers are still in the flock but there is now four years' worth of Dorper/Australian White ewes in the herd from the retention of ewe lambs.
Following the purchase of the fourth property, they are in a building phase so wether lambs are the main source of income.
"Down the track we will be selling ewe lambs again," Mrs Paterson said.
In 2015, the Patersons completely destocked their properties due to both severe drought and wild dog issues.
"During this time on our original two properties, we spent the year fully dog and feral animal fencing as we had no stock on at all," Mrs Paterson said.
"The Dorpers are certainly very productive but the main reason we changed was for their hardiness and more of the adaption to changing climates.
"We can't change the climate, so we had to change the stock."
The Patersons move to meat sheep followed on from a mob of their Merinos that were away on agistment being joined to meat breed rams.
"We realised that was the end of our Merino lambs, so we started thinking out of the box," she said.
"We have dog fences and we can open our eyes to running goats and running meat sheep and we know the risk of affecting neighbours, we can contain them safely."
As the properties have a large area of Gidgee timber, which is dense in parts and can harbour wild dogs, they did their research and found Dorpers the best fit for their hardiness.
"We find the sheep love it [the Gidgee] and the Merinos would never eat it so that's tapped into another easy fodder for us, and it is a great management strategy for the timber," she said.
They found the Dorper sheep to not only be hardy but extremely maternal with great mothering instincts. They cull for undesirable traits including undershot jaws, weak shoulder, and obvious bad types.
"Because we are handling so many we aren't heavy classers, but we are classing for undershot jaws and any bad features," Mrs Paterson said.
The ewe flock is joined three times in two years, so about every eight months, with a ratio of two rams to 100 ewes for a six week natural joining period.
"We used to join them more often but as they are prolific breeders, we don't want to push them too hard," she said.
"We lamb any time in the year, but we particularly try to avoid Christmas time, January and February as we prefer not to have little lambs in summer.
"We do have multiples at lambings... the majority of ewes have twins."
Lambs are weaned at four to six months of age with most ewe lambs being retained and wethers being sold mainly on AuctionPlus or through an agent when they reach 25-40 kilograms.
The bulk of the lambs were sold to the Arcadian Organics, Toowoomba, Qld, which is quite a long distance from the Paterson's property resulting in stock being held to 43kg and upwards in weight.
Since the "feral fence" was installed, the Patersons have been upgrading their internal fences to aid in management of controlled joinings and to ensure that when they handle a mob they go back into a secure paddock.
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