Our lead ram, Senior Grand Champion, Pretoria Show,2007 and Grand Champion Breeding Ram, Pretoria Show,2008.

When we purchased a small 8 hectare farm in Magaliesburg back in 2004 and converted it into a guest farm called Kwa Manzi Guest Farm we wanted to keep a small flock of sheep both to appeal to our guests and to help control the grass on the farm. Searching the internet we came across interesting but very small amounts of references to and information about indigenous sheep of South Africa and Pedis in particular. A few months later we acquired a small group of 10 of these very unique sheep.

What began as a hobby grew into a fascination and a passion as we experienced first hand the wonders of the Pedi sheep breed created by natural selection over thousands of years with almost no interference from man. Our Pedis were highly fertile, low maintenance (we knew nothing then about sheep care and vaccinations so we did none), excellent mothers and as we discovered, when we finally overcame our townie aversion to the idea and slaughtered a young ram, tasted fantastic!

So when we purchased the 750 hectare Thaba Manzi Ranch it was a natural progression to bring our Pedi sheep, now grown to a flock of some 45 individuals despite our voracious addiction to mutton and two losses to a neighbours' dog. We have since been fortunate, via contacts made in our day job Hoskens Rural Real Estate selling farms in the Magaliesberg area and through the Bapedi Sheep Breeders Society of which we are members, to increase our flock to about 400 animals some of which are among the top individuals in the country including the Senior Grand Champion ram and the Senior Grand Champion ewe at the Pretoria Show.

We manage our Pedi sheep on an extensive basis. This means that they graze and range freely on some 120 hectares of our ranch in a multi-ram single flock with no forced lambing season and are only brought in at night into a 1 hectare open jackal-proof camp. We continue to keep dosing and medication to the minimum, usually treating individual animals only if specific symptoms present themselves. Because we run a stud we unfortunately are obliged by the rules of the society to remove our young rams before they reach breeding age. These rams, together with our de-selected ewes, form our commercial flock which run separate to the stud flock and which we market successfully to local consumers.

Our mission: To remain recognized as dependable breeders of both stud and commercial Pedi sheep.

 Sheep that on a kg/hectare/input costs basis cannot be beaten by any other breed - period.

© Thaba Manzi Ranch 2007-