New home for exotic sheep

Press, 20 December 1985, Page 20

New home for exotic sheep

The new mainland home for 165 exotic lambs which were quarantined on Somes Island was open to the public for the first and last time recently.

Hopuhopu Animal Quarantine and Research Station is 150 hectares of peat flats and rolling clay hills near Ngaruawahia.

The name means “catch” or “hold” in Maori, appropriate for a property where the sheep will be held for the rest of their lives behind a double fence.

Finnish Landrace, Oxford Down and Texel lambs were bom this spring from Scandinavian embryos implanted in Coopworth ewes, and Finn Cross Coopworth lambs were born to inseminated ewes.

The farm will be run along the lines of a fullscale quarantine station controlled by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries Agricultural Research and Animal Health Divisions.

Elaborate steps have been taken to prevent any possibility of exotic sheep diseases being introduced to this country and New Zealand sheep diseases being contracted by the exotic stock.

The main risk, animal to animal contact across the property’s boundary, has been dealt with through the use of a perimeter deer fence, with a second conventional fence inside it.

Entry to the station requires written permission, a ministry veterinarian, Mr

Peter Hoyle, said, and outer clothing and footwear must be changed on entry and exit.

Vehicles must be cleaned before entering, and pass though a disinfectant wheel bath on the way out. Farm staff live in adjacent housing not on the station itself. . The Hopuhopu farm will provide a place to multiply purebred and crossbred exotic sheep for release to commercial farms, according to the head of the Ruakura Station’s genetics section, Dr Neil Clarke. He will control the project which will involve multiplication by a variety of reproductive techniques including superovulation, artificial insemination and embryo transfer. using those methods will allow the number of exotic sheep to be rapidly built up. The breeds will mainly be released commercially as semen and embryos for transplant.