Time to change crossbred name?

Press, 1 May 1981, Page 16

Time to change crossbred name?

The name crossbred is that given to the dominant type of wool in the New Zealand wool clip. Dr D. A. Ross, of the Wool Research Organisation at Lincoln, does hot like the name;

When presiding over a session of a seminar on the measurement and marketing of crossbred wool in Christchurch last week, he suggested that a change in the name to one like “Rom cross” would be highly desirable (much of it comes from straightbred Romney sheep). He thinks that the present name for this wool, much of which goes into carpets, is unfortunate. Dr Ross said he had recently seen blankets made by a mill at Auckland which were being sold under the name Perendale. A name like Perendale, he

said, could be worth a lot of money. Dr Ross also related how there could be confusion over the sort of wool to which the name crossbred referred — how two people thought that they were talking about the same type of wool but in fact were not.

Perendale wool came in for some criticism at the seminar. The suggestion of one speaker at a discussion session was that the proportion of this sort of wool in the clip was not helping the name of New Zealand wool. There was a criticism of it on the ground that it looked finer than it really was. Defenders of the breed and its wool said it was run on poorer hill country and that many Perendales were being used as work horses in the breaking in of hill country. Dr G. A. Wickham, of

Massey University, said that the Perendales were being used to replace wether flocks and also Romney ewes that had produced C grade cots. ■

Earlier Dr Wickham said there was at present consid- 1 enable interest in whether the performance of crossbred wools in carpets could ba improved if the sheep were selected for more bulky fleeces. Recent processing, trials suggested that more bulky wools made better carpets but the consequences ooi selecting sheep with more t bulky fleeces were still being evaluated.

In particular there seemed to be considerable scope for further improvement of the bulk of Perendale wool since? many Perendale fleeces? were already bulky while others were somewhat lack-, ing in this quality.