Damara are generally very protective mothers.

If ewes are fed adequately through pregnancy and lactation, their parasite level monitored, provided with adequate shelter and not disturbed at lambing time, problems will be rare. Multiple births are quite normal.

Ewes can lamb every 8 months
Ewes lamb approximately every 8 months, so that’s 3 lambs in a 2 year period, 1 more than with other types of sheep. Some people leave the rams in continuously, and just remove the female progeny and castrate the male progeny. If you are going to take advantage of the opportunity to
continuously breed from your Damara, you need to consider the feed situation in particular.

We put our rams in with their selected girls for a six week period so we can expect all birthing to happen over a six week period some 21 weeks later. Makes management much easier because…

• Ear tag ordering and printing is better managed.

• 5 in 1 vaccinations and the booster shot 4 weeks later occur in a managed fashion.

• The foxes only get an opportunity to give us grief for around 6 weeks as they generally only take newborns when the opportunity arises - the Alpaca guards can have trouble looking after their charges when foxes are in a pack. We have seen up to 5 foxes around the mob at times when the Ewes are giving birth.

• We maximise our better feed opportunities.

• We minimise our work and worry load.