Gourmet sheep

Pete Davison is a regular at the Marlborough Farmers’ Market Every Sunday morning you will find him under a forest green awning amongst the other stall owners, displaying and enthusiastically discussing the merits of his locally grown, top quality lean lamb cuts.

The meat comes from Dorper sheep, originating in South Africa and bred purely for its meat. The Dorper is a cross between a Dorset Horn (an Old English meat breed) and a Blackhead Persian (a fat-rumped desert sheep).

Information sheets provided at the market explain this meat comes from ‘Grassmere Dorpers’ raised (by Lake Grassmere) on land bordering the salt producing lake that has double the saline strength of the sea.

Pete is following the traditional practice of a select group of European farmers, who graze their lambs on salted grass either by the sea or salt lakes, to produce gourmet cuts of ‘pre-salted’ lamb.

This happens in France, where sheep are raised on sea-salted grass in Normandy and Brittany, as well as in Canada on flooding marsh land by the lower St. Lawrence River in Quebec, where salt and unsalted water mix, and again on the salt marshes of coastal Cuxhaven-Sahlenburg in Germany.

The culinary specialty is described as succulent and fine textured, with a subtle salty taste – a superior flavour sought after by chefs and food lovers all over the world. In Northern France, in Mont Saint-Michel, La Mere Poulard restaurant serves it as a house specialty and in Baie de Somme, further up the Northern coast, ‘pré-salé’ lamb is the first lamb variety to be given the coveted French AOC label (controlled origin appellation), recognizing the special nature of the product and guaranteeing its quality.

So why not do the same niche marketing in New Zealand, Pete Davison suggests.

Pete says Dorpers produce a high quality carcass and his Dorper meat cuts already have a small following here. Customers at the local Farmers’ Market were very quick to inform him of a difference in taste when towards the end of the season he could only offer Poll Dorset Lamb cuts, as his stocks of Dorper were getting low.

From a small farmer’s point of view, many characteristics make the variety ideal. The sheep are non-selective grazers, comfortable with the same conditions that suit goats, which helps to keep running costs down.

They are also top rather than bottom grazers. Unlike other sheep, they will eat dry flag (dry grass) at the end of summer before tackling the better pasture, as well as straw, such as barley and inferior hay.

For Pete this has meant that under the present tough conditions, his Dorpers are maintaining body weight, while the Corriedale running with them are losing weight.

They are easy to handle, displaying mob group bonding. Pete says the best way to describe this, is by looking at what happened during the war. “During the war the troops noticed that even through shepherds with desert sheep would come in from five different areas, all the sheep would gather together, not bothered that they belonged to different flocks. The next day, however, the sheep automatically went back to the shepherd they belonged to”.

The fact they shed their coats - a mixture of hair and wool –naturally each summer, removes the need for shearing and is another one of the reasons Pete chose Dorpers.

“I would sooner spend a week on a tractor than a day in a shearing shed”, he explains.

If this is not something you do yourself, natural shedding removes the difficulty that sometimes arises from having to find a shearer, along with the need for crutching and fly control – all important cost and time saving characteristics.

They are easy care sheep in all respects, apart from their feet, which require attention because they grow fast, a trait of desert sheep. However Pete has found salt area feeding is good for their feet as well as reducing the need for drenching.

Dorper Sheep Breeders’ societies in New Zealand, Australia and America and South Africa, endorse the attributes that make them ideal for lifestyle farmers.

The sheep type are described as intelligent and loyal which makes them easy to handle; adaptable to their environment, with the ability to do well in harsh conditions and cope with under-utlised poorer pastures; one of the most fertile sheep breeds (reproducing as frequently as every 8 months) with high lamb survival rates.

Furthermore, the ewes are excellent mothers of single or twin lambs, with a good milk supply and the lambs have the ability to graze early on (inherent growth potential) and because they breed all year round (polyestrous), they can fill the gap left by seasonal breeding varieties.

Over fifty years were spent in South Africa developing Dorpers as a meat only animal to give maximum meat of high quality for their weight. As a result of the lower fat cover of the meat, the pelts are thicker than other sheep, and are used for special situations, like the manufacture of luxury car seat covers.

There are two types of purebred, differentiated only by colour - pure white Dorpers called White Dorpers and those with a black and white body, referred to as Dorpers. They are all born white and it takes a year for the black marking to show. This starts halfway up the neck and continues over the entire face including dog –like floppy ears, and looks as if they have dipped their heads in a bucket of black paint.

Both colour types were introduced to NZ from Australia in 2001 and Pete Davison was one of the first to bring in adult sheep from Western Australia.

Since then, Pete has bred on with ewe lambs, sending them to the UK and filling orders for embryos for other parts of the world. Payment is $100 for three-quarter ewe lambs and $500 to $1000 for pure bred sheep, depending on their papers.

You’d have to agree with Pete, when he says that lamb has become a luxury meat for the consumer and eventually the best must fetch better money for the producer.

The experts say the way for the producer to achieve above schedule price, is by developing a brand. Dorper sheep meat combining special flavour if fed on salt pastures, with low fat cover, high yield and quality marbling already has several points of difference going for it.


©2007 Linda Donald
All rights reserved
Appeared in New Zealand Lifestyle Farmer
(1063 words)

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