History of the stud

Roseville Park Dohne Stud was established in 1999 after travelling to South Africa to visit that country's many Dohne Studs. Genetics were carefully chosen and embryos were purchased from nine different studs.

Roseville Park was the first Dohne stud established in Eastern Australia. Two further embryo importations in 2003 and 2004 gave the stud the ability to consolidate its breeding objectives within the flock and today additional traits such as bare breech area are receiving a greater priority.

Early success in breeding sires such as the successful RP00 0132, which has more than 2298 progeny recorded in the ADBA database, indicate the stud is moving in the right direction. A Foundation flock was also started in 1999. It is run independently of the stud and will provide genetic diversity to the “Roseville Park Dohne type”, and be an excellent ongoing comparison with the performance of the Roseville Park stud flock. In 2006 numbers reached a peak of 2000 registered breeding ewes and in 2007 a stringent culling reduced this to 1500 breeding age ewes. The same heavy culling pressure will be applied annually to ensure only the best ewes remain in the stud breeding flock.

The first annual ram sale was held in September, 2001 and in February, 2007 RP held its first Dohne Production sale offering rams and a substantial number of ewes for sale. These two sales are held every year. In early 2009 an extensive artificial insemination and embryo transfer program was undertaken using only the very best stud ewes and elite Dohne sires to again fast track the use of the best Roseville Park genetics.