Growth of Perendales in N.Z. Flock

Press, Issue 32345, 10 July 1970, Page 9

Growth of Perendales in N.Z. Flock

The Perendale, based on the Cheviot and Romney breeds, had established a place for itself in the sheep industry in New Zealand, the president of the Perendale Sheep Society, Mr K. G. Lynch, of Te Awamutu, told about 130 farmers from South Canterbury to Nelson who attended a field day organised by the society on the Kaituna property’ of Messrs K. H. Parkinson and Sons this week.

Mr Lynch said it was estimated that there were about 4m ewes of the breed in country. Numbers of registered flocks had increased from about 26 in 1960 to about 230, with about 40,000 ewes, in the flock book that was now going to print. As well, there were 18 flocks in Australia. “This is good evidence that the breed has a place in our sheep industry,” he commented.

However, the society’s members could not take all of the credit for the growth of the breed, he said. They had been assisted by the labour position on farms and the economics of farming. They had, for instance, come along with a sheep with a finer type of wool at a time when fine wool was in demand.

The outstanding features of the breed included its trouble-free lambing ability and its thriftiness—and if these qualities were preserved then he was confident they would constitute a very important cog in the indus-' try wheel. At the same time, Mr Lynch said, there was a place for a breed like the Coopworth on easier country: it was likely that more would be seen of them.

Tracing the history of the breed, Mr Lynch recalled that Cheviots had come to the country from Australia about 1918 and in the early 1920 s and they were run as a straight breed on the more difficult country in the North Island, but they had not caught on very much at that time.

However, in the early 19405, Professor Geoffrey Peren, of Massey College, thought that the Romney was not performing as well as it should on the college’s hill country property at Tuapaka. Believing that the Cheviot had something to offer, he decided to run trials comparing the Chev-iot-Romney with the straight Romney.

The results of these trials had shown that the Cheviot halfbred was giving a better return on this property. About this time some farmers were also showing interest in the same line of action and :t few properties in Hawke’s Bay. and also possibly elsewhere, were crossing the Cheviot with the Romney. Until about 1951 only firstcross rams had been used but then Professor Peren felt that an endeavour should be made to see if the experiment could be carried further by breeding halfbred to halfbred, and it appeared from this work that the interbred sheep performed as well as the first cross.

By the mid 19505, Mr Lynch said, a market was being established for halfbred rams. And in 1959 steps were being taken to establish a society for the breed.

Of his owr experience with the breed, Mr Lynch said he had become interested about 1955-56 at a time when he was not on a difficult property. He was then farming 400 acres at Te Awamutu in partnership

with his father, on which they were running 2000 ewes. Mating five-year Romney ewes with the Southdown they were getting lambings of about 108 to 112 per cent. However, he had become interested in the performance of halfbreds on a neighbouring, more-difficult property and they had ended up buying 12 Cheviot rams and putting them across 650 good Romney ewes. The wether lambs had outweighed their mates by 31b and 200 two-tooths, when lambed, included only three dry ewes and gave a lambing percentage of 110. He felt that, these sheep had something and that the Cheviot was more than a crossing sheep. Later in 1960 he had acquired a property of his own which, although not of great altitude, was fairly rugged and broken. Thus he had had the experience of running these sheep in both situations, and although the breed was not being pushed for use on the better country and was principally a hill country sheep, it was still not a bad sheep under good feed conditions.

Mr M. L. Udy, now the manager of Massey University’s hill farm at Tuapaka, recalled the results of the six years of trials there in the 19405, comparing the Cheviot-Romney with the Romney. Over the six-year period, he said, the halfbreds had given a 12 per cent better financial return than the Romneys—s4.B4 compared with s4.3l—and it was his opinion that this margin, which was conservative, would be as valid today as it was then.

In these trials the average lambing percentage for the halfbreds had been 116, compared with 85 for the Romneys; wool weights, including crutchings, had been 111 b for the Romneys and B.Blb for the halfbreds; over three seasons 43 per cent of the Romney two-tooths had

been too small to go to the ram and only 1.7 per cent of the halfbreds; 20.8 per cent of the Romneys had been dry at shearing compared with 7.4 per cent of the halfbreds; there was an average of 34.4 per cent of the halfbreds in the first drafts of wether lambs compared with 16.3 per cent of the Romneys, with 87 per cent of the halfberds being drafted by March and 40 per cent of the Romneys, and only 4 per cent of the halfbreds having to be sold as stores and 38.7 per cent of the Romneys; there were 4.1 per cent of deaths in the Romney ewe lambs from weaning to the two-tooth stage compared with 1.2 per cent for the halfbreds and a total of 5.4 per cent of deaths in the Romney ewes compared with 2.01 per cent for the halfbreds. Of more recent developments with the breed, Mr Udy said it was important for lambing that ewes and rams with good shoulders should be used.

He emphasised that the high Cheviot shoulder should be preserved.

in elaboration of this, he referred afterwards to a breed publication which says that the withers should be higher than the shoulders of lowland breeds. The setting of the shoulders should be such as to produce the correct angle in the pasterns and to avoid any “straightness” in the front legs. Excessive width should be avoided as it was unnecessary and made lambing difficult. Emphasising the importance of growing wool that did not have lustre, Mr Udy said it had been determined that over three seasons there had been an average premium over the Romney price of 2c per lb, ranging from He to 2Jc for wool that did not have lustre. He told a questioner that there was only a factional advantage in weight in favour of the wool with lustre. Wool, he said, could be improved by use of the right rams. Argument that the Perendale was a poor clip-

per when it reached about five or six years of age had proved quite unfounded.

Mr W. R. R. Hewitt, who wa s associated with the early work on the breed at Massey, said that the great bulk of the development of the breed had been done by practical people and not by scientists.

Noting that recent trials at Ruakura had shown that a big proportion of lamb deaths occurred because of difficult births and in the first three days of life, Mr L. Galloway, sheep and wool instructor of the Department of Agriculture in Christchurch, said he felt that the Perendale had the answer to this to a very large extent. At the same time he warned against wide variations in wool count in the one fleece between the shoulder and the rump and legs. When wool prices had been good many breeders had tended to ignore unevenness in fleece. There were two different markets for Perendale wool, he said. The best went to the Japanese for hosiery and knitting wool. The stronger wool went into carpets. While it was claimed that the Perendale could hold its own even although clipping lib or IJlb less wool, Mr Galloway said that the wool could be downgraded for the Japanese market where the sheep were run on difficult country and had seed in it.

There was a class of Perendale wool, he said, which was out on its own but people had to be very wary of Perendales with cross fibred and harsh fleeces. Mr Galloway said that locally there was a serious shortage of Cheviot rams for use with Romney ewes and rather than use a poor Cheviot he would rather a farmer did nothing at all. However, he claimed to have had some success in using Perendale rams with Romney ewes. This year’s North Island winner of the A. C. Cameron memorial award, Mr T. H. C. Chamberlin, of Reporoa, forecast a greater premium in the future for good quality wool. In the last year there had been a greater premium for Perendale wool compared with the Romney off similar country.