AS A shearer and a wool classer, it was not easy for Geoff Emmerson to turn his back on fine-wool production.
He'd grown up in a southern Wimmera farming business that produced the fibre and dabbled in growing about 40ha of crops each year.
Geoff farms at Clear Lake, Victoria, which lies along a line of swamps that traditionally filled each winter and sometimes overflowed, engulfing crops and paddocks in the process.
But then the wool price dived and the wet years turned to dry and the crop dabbling got a bit more serious.
Geoff began to question the logic of growing fine wool, only to see it get covered in dust as the sheep fed on stubbles over summer.
"It was hard to give it up but I couldn't see a future in trying to grow fine wool and crop," he said.
Then one day an alternative materialised in the most unexpected of places, miles from Clear Lake, at a field day on South Australia's Yorke Peninsula.
Geoff and wife Chris had been considering diversifying into Boer goats when he noticed a pen of unusual looking animals.
"I thought they were goats," Geoff said.
They were in fact Damara sheep, which had only recently arrived in Australia to provide a lean, low input and chemical-free alternative breed.
The long legged, floppy-eared sheep were a world away from fine-wool Merinos but the Emmersons saw them as a good fit to what was now a crop-dominated farm business.
The family now runs about 500 Damaras, which have been crossed with Dorpers in the past year, as well as 470 first-cross ewes for prime lamb production. They also crop about 400ha.
Geoff initially saw the Damara as an ideal way to achieve non-chemical weed control on the family's 470ha farm.
"I wanted something that could handle weeds and help reduce our spray inputs," he said.
"They are not as severe as goats but will eat a lot of roughage and weeds that Merinos won't touch."
But probably their biggest benefit is the easy care.
"I call them no-maintenance sheep," he said. "There is no shearing, no crutching, no jetting, no flies and no mulesing."
Damara meat is lean and can virtually be grown without any chemical inputs.
The ewes are also excellent mothers, who rarely lose lambs to fox attack, and give birth three times every two years.
"The lamb hits the ground running and away they go. They run together in a mob and the lambs and ewes never leave each other," Geoff said.
Lambing time is left up to nature, with the rams running with the ewes all year.
And, not surprisingly, the Damara rams are also pretty handy, easily servicing 100 ewes each.
The absence of wool on their back also means electric fences work effectively on the Damaras and will keep them at bay.
The sheep also provided a perfect fit on the 160ha of scrub that Geoff and Chris lease.
While this scrub block could only run about 250 Merino wethers in the past, it now comfortably hosts 400 Damara ewes and lambs.
The Damaras live in the scrub over winter and follow the first-cross ewes on to stubble paddocks in summer.
"The first-cross lambs get the good tucker and the Damaras come after them," Geoff said.
In the early years, Geoff sold 32-33kg Damaras for live export at $60/head but since that market disappeared has had to settle for $35-$40.
It might sound cheap compared to higher prices of traditional second-cross lambs but Geoff still believes the lack of maintenance, high fertility and higher stocking rate all make the Damaras profitable.
"No doubt there is money in first-cross ewes but you have to have good feed for them," he said.
These days, Geoff and Chris crop almost all their 470ha, which leaves little room, apart from the leased scrub, to run the sheep over winter.
Over the past year the Emmersons have moved from producing pure Damara lambs to a Damara-Dorper cross, known by some as Dampers.
Geoff said Dorper genetics would require management changes but would also produce a bigger and, hopefully, higher-priced lamb.
In the first joinings, most of the coloured Damara ewes have thrown white Dorper-cross lambs, which Geoff said should be more saleable.
While most of Australia's Damara population is located further north, Geoff said the breed suited his enterprise.
"On every angle there is a saving, they don't need many rams, they have good lambs and don't lose them, and they lamb every seven months," he said. "They are a tough animal, I'm sure they are an ideal sheep for outback Australia."
