Merino sheep in Australia – the research of H.B. Carter

By Dr Clive Dalton.

The story starts at Leeds
This bit of Australian agricultural history has turned out to be a fascinating tale - and it's necessary to tell it backwards! This is because it developed from my lecturing years at Leeds University Department of Agriculture, when some funny looking sheep arrived at the University farm around 1967 which we learned were ‘Merinos’, along with a Mr H.B. Carter who was given an office in the Textile Department, and not with us. We had no contact with the textile department staff, as we in Agriculture had no interest in wool and synthetic fibres. This attitude was similar to our association with the University Leather Department (one of the few in the world) - we just never met.

None of us on the Agriculture staff knew anything about either Carter or his Merinos, other than they had arrived from the Animal Breeding Research Organisation (ABRO) in Edinburgh, where it was rumoured that Carter (an Australian) and his sheep had departed, but not by choice.

It wasn't easy in 2010 to find people who remembered what went on at Leeds after I left in 1968, but I was fortunate through one of the few ‘agriculturists’ who was there after me, (Tim Johnson), to find Professor Richard Carter in the Institute of Immunology and Infections Research, at the School of Biological Sciences in the University of Edinburgh. Richard is H.B. Carter's second son and fortunately had documented his father’s papers after his death in 2005, intending to deposit them in a Sydney museum which specialised in the history of sheep and wool.

More on my part of the story is blogged here: http://woolshed1.blogspot.com/2010/05/merino-sheep-hb-carters-book-on-sheep.html

H.B. Carter scientific archive
On H.B. Carter's death in February 2005, Richard Carter assembled and listed his father's papers and equipment at Yeo Bank, Congresbury Somerset, UK, 6th May 2010. It's a fascinating list and is indicative of a man passionate about his work.

One of many H.B. Carter's photos in his archive, of Merino sheep in
typical Australian grazing conditions where he did his research.
H.B. Carter is standing nearest the car.

Contents of archive
1. About a dozen rolls, 1 to 3 feet in length comprising data maps of Australia and NSW (e.g. numbers and distribution of Merino sheep, pedigree flocks) and including a package of rolls of plans by H.B.Carter for the C.S.I.R. Sheep Biology laboratories at Prospect.

2. Metal cabinet ( 9" x 19" x 38") containing approx 10,000 glass slides of tissue sections (sheep skin) fixed, stained and mounted under glass (6 to 8 per slide) in 5 shelves or tiers, each containing 14 drawers of slides (all with identification numbers)

3. Three portfolio-sized folders with research data, charts etc.

4. One box (20" x 20" x 26") containing HBC's saddle, harness and other "bush" equipment

5. Forty one boxes (11" x 18" x 18") containing HBC's books, documents and original paper records, correspondence etc. identified as follows:

• Box (l) - HBC, records, scientific etc. (Australia)
• Box (2) - HBC, records, scientific etc. (Australia)
• Box (3) - HBC, records, scientific etc. (Australia)
• Box (4) - HBC, records, scientific etc. (Australia)
• Box (5) - HBC, records, scientific etc. (Australia)
• Box (6a) - HBC, records, scientific etc. (Australia)
• Box (6b) - HBC, records, scientific etc. (Australia)
• Box (6c) - HBC, records, scientific etc. (Australia)
• Box (7) - HBC, sheep & wool ( National statistics)
• Box (8) - HBC, Edinburgh & after, 1954- 1970s scientific records & correspondence.
• Box (9) - HBC, Leeds, 1963 ? - 1970 ; correspondence 1948 – 1969.
• Box (10) - HBC, Massy "Australian Merino"; other bound material, 1929 – 1988.
• Box (11) - HBC. papers, mainly correspondence - 1948 – 1998.
• Box (12) - HBC, papers, Yeo Bank years,1970 - correspondence.
• Box (13) - HBC, scientific research data pre 1953.
• Box (14) - HBC, scientific research data - Australia - pre 1953.
• Box (15) - HBC, papers & correspondence Edinburgh & later.
• Box (l6) - Approx. 400 fleece samples annotated (each 1/2 x 2 X 18 inch) in 7 x card boxes; samples are from cross-bred sheep grown at the Animal Breeding Research Organization (ABRO), Edinburgh, Scotland; dating from between 1954 and 1963. H.B.Carter personal skin biopsy punch kit. Photograph album of fleece collecting in action. Envelope of H.B.Carter’s pen and ink drawings of Merino sheep.
• Box (17) - 560 well annotated slides of fixed and stained skin sections from Merino sheep mounted under glass in 7 boxes and 1 package. Documents from Russia.
• Box (l8) -2 black file boxes containi11g:- 1 x envelope 4 x 6 inch containing 18" and early 19th century fibre specimens (presumably sheep, unknown breed); 54 sheep skin biopsy specimens preserved in wax (Bradford) (3 x packages); 144 sheep skill biopsy specimens preserved in wax (1966/67) (18 X packages); 93 tubes with label slips inside them (no biological material evident); 1 cardboard box approx l cubic foot containing 58 sheep fleece specimens (unknown date and place of origin, possibly from around 1990). 2 A4 envelopes with Merino wool samples (Edinburgh 1956).
• Box (19) - Approx. 100 slides of Soay (Scotland) sheep skin sections, fixed, stained and nlounted under glass; Approx. 100 slides of skin sections of cross-bred sheep - e.g. Merino X Border Leicester - fixed, stained and mounted under glass; Approx. 100 slides of skin sections of Scottish rodent species (most likely including Microtos sp., Apodemus sp. or Mus musculus , fixed, stained and mounted under glass (4 packages); Approx. 400 slides of skin sections of Scottish deer (most likely Red Deer, Cervus elaphus or Roe Deer, Capreolus capreolus, fixed, stained and mounted under glass (4 packages); Approx. 200 slides of skin sections of Merino sheep, fixed, stained and mounted under glass (2 packages).
• Box (20) - Approx. 1000 coarse wool fibre samples from Scotland (likely Blackface Sheep, or other such breed) (second half of 20th century); 3 jars with early Australian wools (presumably early Merino); 5 jars fleece samples from Afghanistan (presumably some breed of Afghan sheep); Blue card box containing:- 55 tubes with labeled slips inside (no biological material evident); Brown card box containing 45 tubes with labeled slips inside (no biological material evident); Small brown box containing 24 tubes with labeled slips inside (no biological material evident); 8 wooden racks containing:- 192 tubes with labeled slips inside (no biological material evident).
• Box (21) HBC, sheep follicle drawings, photos, film and sundry.
• Box (22) HBC, papers UK post 1954.
• Box (23) HBC, papers UK post 1954.
• Box (24) HBC, papers UK post 1954.
• Box (25) HBC, papers UK post 1954; incl photos ?pre 1954.
• Box (26) HBC, (fleece samples) papers UK post 1954.
• Box (27) HBC, papers UK post 1954.
• Box (28a) HBC, papers UK post 1954.
• Box (28b) HBC, papers UK post 1954.
• Box (29) HBC, literature reprints A – C.
• Box (30) HBC, literature reprints D – G.
• Box (31) HBC. literature reprints H - I.
• Box (32) HBC, literature reprints M – P.
• Box (33) HBC, literature reprints R – T.
• Box (34) HBC, literature reprints U - Y + lit card files + "books" from Leeds (1960's).
• Box (35) HBC, personal publication reprints & other published material.
• Box (36) HBC, other published materials.
• Box (37) HBC, other published materials, pre 1945.
• Box (38) HBC, other published materials.
• Box (39) - 1 plastic bag with 18 labeled fleece (sheep unknown breed) samples (1 x 1 x 4 inch); 1 plastic bag with 8 labeled fleece (sheep unknown breed) samples 1 x 1 x 4 inch); 1 plastic bag with 26 labeled fleece (sheep unknown breed) samples (1 x 1 x 4 inch); 1 plastic bag with 12 labeled fleece (sheep unknown breed) samples (1x1x4 inch); 1 plastic bag with fleece (sheep unknown breed) samples (9 x 9 x 9 inch); 1 envelope (The Rodd 29th May 1973) containing 10 envelopes (3 x 4 inch) with fleece samples (sheep unknown breed);5 plastic sleeves (2 x 4 x 4 inches) with fleece samples (sheep unknown breed); 1 envelope (Ulundri/Castle Hill/NSW) with 20 plastic sleeves with fleece samples (Merino) (presumed pre-19541; Folders of data records, documents and plans with reference to Sheep Biology Laboratories, C.S.I.R. at Prospect, N.S.W.; Metal syringe (function unknown).
  

The HB Carter ‘Memoir’
Among H.B. Carter's documents, Richard found what his father called his ‘Memoir’, which Richard kindly let me read. I felt it was of such significance, not only in Australia but around the sheep world, that I suggested it should be made available for future agricultural researchers and historians via my blog.

The memoir made me realise that all the things we at Leeds had thought and inferred about Carter and his sheep, were in total ignorance of the calibre of the man, and his contribution to sheep and wool science, as well as to the textile industry in Australia and around the world.

The 'Memoir' knol
Richard Carter and I have worked on getting the memoir from HBC’s version (typed on his portable Remington with very few typing errors) through as a Google Knol (see http://knol.google.com/k/clive-dalton/h-b-carter-personal-memoir-of/2txpuk4gtju3n/18)
with the kind permission of the Carter family. To HB Carter's original words we have only added subheadings and some of his original photos from his archive to break up the text for easier reading.

Richard has written some personal notes to put the Memoir into perspective, in both time and location.

Notes by Professor Richard Carter – January 2011
A story about a sheep flock
When my father, Harold Burnell Carter, was in his late forties, he began to write a story about a flock of sheep that had been gathered together at the behest of a King who would go mad, and about the man who served him as their shepherd.

The flock of sheep was a very special one for it was descended from the sheep from whose backs came the Golden Fleece - that treasure of ancient legend sought by the Greek hero, Jason, the Captain of the ‘Argonaughts’. For, true to its name, whoever possessed the Golden Fleece held in his hands the wealth of a nation.

His Majesty's flock
And to this end also, the king who would go mad sent out his servants to find and bring him descendants of the miraculous sheep. My father called his story ‘His Majesty’s Spanish Flock’. The sheep of the Spanish Flock were Merinos, coveted throughout Europe for the extreme fineness of their wool and upon which the looms of England depended for their lucrative industry.

The king was King George III of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; his “shepherd” was Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society of England. In 1788, the small beginnings of the flock of Merinos, smuggled from their native pastures on the plains of Spain, was secretly assembled at Windsor Castle on the banks of the River Thames.

Intended as the seed stock for a revitalised wool industry in the United Kingdom – in the words of the King “a most national object” – the little flock, gathered in twos and threes by Spanish “contrabandistas” and smuggled through Portugal for shipment to England, was, indeed, destined to found the fortunes of a nation. For about 100 years, from perhaps the 1830’s to the 1930’s, the wealth of that nation would be built upon “the sheep’s back” – upon the back of the Australian Merino.

Founding the wealth of Australia
My father’s story - the story of the Spanish sheep that would found the wealth of the Australian nation - was the product of a personal quest, a quest that grew from his own instinct, common to his generation, to work for the prosperity of his country, the Commonwealth of Australia.

The means he found were through the scientific study of the Merino in Australia. And he began, in the early 1930’s, at the age of 23, by working for an organization called the “Australian Estates and Mortgage Company Limited” as a veterinarian for Merino studs on sheep stations in New South Wales.

As his second of three sons, growing up in the late 1940’s, early 1950’s, on a small farm on the edge of the Australian bush, 20 miles from the centre of Sydney, the line of the Blue Mountains marking the western horizon, I knew my father to be a “sheep scientist”.

Off to work in the 'lab’
My father went to work in Sydney most days to the 'lab', which puzzled me for a long time as I understood this to be the “lav”. When he wasn’t at the 'lab' he would be working on the farm making fences or ploughing or doing things with sheep.

This might be making them walk through, and be ‘drenched’ with, a very green liquid, and occasionally tying them onto a bench and shaving the wool off a square patch of skin followed by a short sharp dig in the sides with a metal object that neatly removed a small circle of skin.

Bare-foot in the dust

A photo by H.B. Carter of his gear for fleece sampling on farms

While this was going on, I and my brothers would be running around bare foot in the dust taking it all in and occasionally being chatted to by my father’s mates “Wol” Clarke, Daly and Ken Ferguson, of whom Ken always seemed more smartly dressed than Wol, Daly or my Dad. Once or twice there arrived at our farm, along with Wol and Daly, an impressive looking vehicle called the “Battle Buggy”, and an even more impressive one called the “Chev”, which had a canvas back.

Run! – here comes ‘Butty’
The sheep themselves also had quite a lot of character. There was one ram in particular called Butty. He was ‘unherdable’! In fact the only way he could be brought into the yard was, apparently, for someone, Bill in my recollection, to walk out into the back paddock, attract Butty’s attention, an easy task, and then run like the blazes with Butty in full pursuit, having calculated in advance the distance that could be covered and still reach the fence before Butty caught up with him.

Meanwhile someone else, probably my Dad, stood by to do some deft gate work, which with luck, would divert Butty into entrapment in the holding yard. Unconnected with any of the above was a Sydney Funnel Web spider which the same Bill captured by placing a glass coffee jar over the spider’s hole. I can still recall, as I imagine, the thwack as the spider hit the bottom (now the top) of the jar. Brave man was Bill.

Names and more names
Away from the yard and the paddock, in addition to those already mentioned, names such as Bull, Hedley Marston, Gill, Peggy Hardy, Noeline Schwann, Des Dowling, Dunlop, Tom Austin and Bunny Austin are ones that come readily to mind from recollections of conversions between our parents. All our table place mats had what I now realise were mites and parasitic worms and such like embroidered on them.

Factors and fleeces
There was also much talk of 'factors' and the 'fleece'. Once in a while the family would be treated to slide shows projected onto the wall of our “sitting room” in the tumble down shack that was, at the time, our home. These were thrilling occasions. The images were uninterpretable but very exciting.

There were whirls and coloured, somewhat circular, shapes within shapes, odd dots and what not. Slide after slide was projected, each quite as transfixing as the previous one, until it was all over and we were sent, more reluctantly than on most nights, to bed.

From time to time my father was absent altogether for days on end. This had something to do with places with names like 'Wanganella' and involved “Sheep Stations” and “Austin”. Whatever all this was about my parents seemed pretty happy with their lot, and so were we; who wouldn’t be?

Off to Bonny Scotland
And then, all of sudden, we learned that we were leaving Australia and going to Scotland. This was in 1954. And so we did, and came to live near Edinburgh while my father carried on working there as a “sheep scientist”. Unfortunately there were no more paddocks or sheep and horses and chickens, and less unfortunately, no more spiders and snakes, at least not to worry about.

So from here on my father just went to work at the 'lab', until, that is, he began to spend more and more of his time collecting old letters, or rather photographic copies of them, hundreds and, indeed, thousands of them. And sooner or later we learned that he was preparing to write a book, a book about some sheep, the mad king, George III, and Joseph Banks, a name familiar to me then, and to most of any who had heard of him at all, as the “botanist” who had accompanied Captain Cook on his voyage to “discover” Australia.

From Edinburgh to Leeds
Not long after this my father stopped working in Edinburgh and went instead to work in Leeds, still with sheep but now mysteriously associated with the “textile industry” and the names Sir Francis Hill and David Knight crept into the family vocabulary. The family didn't follow him to Leeds.

By now we were heading out and away to wherever our own lives were going to take us, and in 1970 my father, with my mother, now a senior consultant psychiatrist in hospitals and homes in the West Country, retired to live in a house in a country village near Bristol. “Retired” my father may have been but not idle.

By 1988 he had completed and published a definitive biography of Sir Joseph Banks. My father, his work begun with youthful optimism to understand and produce a better sheep, ended by lifting the vale of obscurity from 'the botanist who sailed with Captain Cook' to show him as he truly was - Sir Joseph Banks, inspired Godfather of British science in an 'Age of Wonder', and perhaps more than any other, Father of the Australian nation.

Continuing interest
My father’s interests and correspondences continued until near the time of his death in early 2005. Our mother’s death followed three years later to the day but one, in 2008. Thereupon began the task of dismantling the family home and the safeguarding of, as we now fully realised, our father’s double legacy and archive.

Most clear and obvious was the huge collection of his library and documents related to his historical research, now with the 'Sir Joseph Banks Archive' at the University of Nottingham.

And then there was the archive of material directly concerning his own work as a 'sheep scientist'. From out of this emerged the 'memoir' which is a main feature of this blog and knoll, and which reveals at last what was behind the slide shows, the names and the places, the Chev truck and the strange business of snatching neat round circles of skin from a shaven patch on the side of a sheep. The memoir itself was written to assist Charles Massy in writing his monumental work - 'The Australian Merino'.

Comments by Dr T.S.Ch'ang
'TS' was a young newly-recruited scientist at CSIRO at Prospect soon after it opened, and now retired, his 2011 comments are interesting. HB Carter was seen by these young scientists as a rather shadowy aloof figure around the lab, and there was little communication between them in the very hierarchical structure of CSIRO. This was even expressed in the colour of the overalls worn by the different ranks - scientists with white overalls of course!

'The Carter memoir made interesting reading with many, if not most of the names, places and events known to me, which places me in a category of dinosaurs or its near relatives.

'Helen Newton Turner recruited me to initiate and carry out research in CSIRO on meat sheep genetics and breeding in Australia, which may now appear like an after-thought after reading the Carter draft.

'Without the benefit of knowing what or how much Carter had already done in Merino sheep, e.g. such as sampling the Merino Studs for wool genetic studies etc, I also went to the trouble (in 1968) of writing to Dorset Horn Stud Flock owners, South Australian Merino (Collinsville), and some Corriedale ram breeders.

'This was to assemble my collection of experimental sheep for the definitive meat sheep genetics study on 'Arding' - a field station down the road from 'Chiswick'. I even designed and built an abattoir on 'Chiswick' to do slaughter for the carcass work.

'My years at Prospect - a geneticist rubbing shoulders with the physiologists now appear to be pre-ordained by Carter, and not a convenience move in CSIRO after the merging of Divisions, among other reasons to save money!

'A little history does provide perspective - even retrospectively, to see things which otherwise might be viewed as a linear process in time, but it's really a circular motion coming to its logical conclusion'.

Dr Francis William (F.W.) Dry – Career, Memories and Anecdotes

By Dr Clive Dalton

Dr Dry collecting wool fibres from a Drysdale ram at the
MAF Whatawhata Hill Country Research Station in the late 1970s

Francis William Dry

• Born at Driffield, East Riding of Yorkshire, 23 October 1891.
• Elder son of Frank Dry, master draper and his wife Mary Avis Corke.
• Known as William, attended Driffield Boarding School where awarded scholarship to attend Bridlington Grammar School.
• B.Sc. (Leeds) 1913.
• Honours in Zoology (Class 1) 1914.
• M.Sc. (Leeds) 1914.
• Awarded Carnegie Scholarship to visit research institutions in the USA.
• Married Florence Wilson Swinton, at Saginaw, Michegan, USA on 18 May 1921. Had a son and a daughter.
• From 1917-1921 served as assistant entomologist in Kenya.
• Awarded Ackroyd Memorial Research Fellowship at the University of Leeds in 1921.
• D.Sc. (Leeds) 1925.
• 1928. Appointed as Seniour Lecturer in agricultural zoology at the newly founded Massey Agricultural College, Palmerston North, NZ.
• 1929 established flock of hairy Romney sheep at Massey. Work finally reported in detail in 1955.
• Retired from Massey in 1956 and took up honorary fellowship in Department of Textile Industries at Leeds University.
• 1958 Hon Life Member of the NZ Society of Animal Production.
• 1961-62 specialty carpet wool production established under control of Massey College.
• 1963 Dry and his wife returned to Palmerston North where he continued his work on fibre types leading to his book in 1975.
• Hon D.Sc.(Massey University) 1966.
• Hon Fellow of Textile Institute, Manchester 1971.
• O.B.E. (1973).
• Fellow of the NZ Institute of Agricultural Science (1976).
• Died Palmerston North 1979.

'Daddy'
‘Daddy’: FW Dry lived and worked in the days of formality when from school onwards, we males were only addressed by their surnames. In some schools, girls got their surnames too, but more often these were preceded by ‘MISS’, said with cutting emphasis if they were in trouble.

So nicknames became very popular in this era – especially for much-loved and much-hated people we knew. So apparently in Dry’s early days he became ‘Daddy’ behind his back, but always Dr Dry to his face or if in the company of others. He never, ever said – ‘oh call me Francis or Frank or whatever’. He liked to be addressed as Dr Dry.

The term ‘Daddy’ apparently came from the fact that Mrs Dry always referred to him as ‘Daddy’, which he would have been called within the family made up of two children, Avis Mary who was a psychiatrist in Leeds, and David who was a photographer in Palmerston North. Both are deceased.

Dry referred to her as ‘Mammy’, or described her as Mrs Dry in conversations with others. She would never know that “Daddy’ became the name we all used, and which has now gone into the annals of agricultural and New Zealand history.

F.W.Dry Memorial Award
'This Award arises from a fund established in memory of the late Dr F.W. Dry, founding lecturer in Animal Genetics and Wool Science at Massey Agricultural College, and a member of staff from 1928 to 1956'.

Details: The F.W. Dry Memorial Award shall have a value determined each year from the interest earned on the capital and be open to all students undertaking a postgraduate degree or postgraduate diploma in animal science (papers with prefix of 117) at Massey University. The Award will be restricted to candidates specialising in animal breeding, animal genetics, or mammalian fibre science.

Dry’s famous publications

• Dry, F.W. (1924) . The genetics of the Wensleydale breed of sheep. I. The occurrence of black lambs. J. Genet. 14,: 203-218.
• Dry, F.W. (1926). The coat of the mouse (Mus musculus). J. Genetics, 16: 287-340.
• Dry, F.W. (1926). Colour inheritance in the Wensleydale breed of sheep. J. Text. Inst., 17: (30), 180-186.
• Dry, F.W. (1927). Mendelian breeding with Wensleydale sheep. J. Text. Inst., 18: (10), 415-420.
• Dry, F.W. (1928). The agouti coloration of the mouse (Mus musculus) and the rat (Mus norvegicus). J. Genetics, 20: 131-44.
• Dry, F. W. (1932). Some aspects of fertility in sheep. Proceedings of a meeting of sheep breeders, Massey College July 1932.
• Dry, F. W. (1933). Types of hairy fibres in the fleece of the Romney lamb, their identification and importance. Proc. of meeting of sheep breeders, Massey College July 1933, P 38.
• Dry, F.W. (1933a and 1934). Hairy fibres of the Romney sheep. N.Z. Jl. Agric., 46: 10-22, 141-53. 279-88: and 48: 331-43.
• Dry, F.W. (1933b). The pre-natal check in the birthcoat of the New Zealand Romney lamb. J. Text. Inst., 24: T 161-6: N.Z. Jl Sci.Tech., 14: 353-8.
• Dry, F.W. (1935).The early progress of the Romney lamb and features in the development of the fleece. N.Z. Jl Agric., 51 (4): 229-37.
• Dry, F.W. (1936). The genetics of the Wensleydale breeding sheep. J. Genet. 33 (1): 123-34.
• Dry, F.W. (1940). Recent work on the wool zoology of the New Zealand Romney. N.Z. Jl Sci. Tech., A22: 209-20.
• Dry. F.W., McMahon, P.R., Sutherland, J.A. (1940). A mendelian situation in the birthcoat of the New Zealand Romney lamb. Nature, 145: 390-391.
• Dry, F.W. (1952). The genetics and fibre morphology of N-type sheep. N.Z. Sci. Rev.5: 69-71.
• Dry, F.W.; Stephenson, S.K. (1954). Presence or absence of the prenatal check in lambs' birthcoats. Nature, 173: 878.
• Dry, F.W. (1955a). Multifactorial inheritance of halo-hair abundance in New Zealand Romney sheep. Aust. J. agric. Res. 6: 608-23.
• Dry, F.W.(1955b). The dominant N gene in New Zealand Romney sheep. Aust. J. Agric. Res., 6: 725-69.
• Dry, F.W.(1955c). The recessive N gene in New Zealand Romney sheep. Aust. J. Agric. Res., 6: 833-62.
• Dry, F.W. (1956): Twenty years of Mendelian sheep breeding. Proc. N.Z. Soc. Anim. Prod. 16: 130-140.
• Dry, F.W. (1958). Further breeding experiments with New Zealand Romney N-type sheep. Aust. J. agric. Res., 9' 348-62.
• Dry, F.W.(1965a). Lamb fibre types. In Biology of the Skin and Hair Growth. (Lyne, A.G. and Short, B.F., Eds). Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 89-104.
• Dry, F.W.(1965b). Mendelian sheep. Indian J. Genetics and Plant Breeding. 25:113-36. The late Professor Al Rae at Massey told me that he considered this paper a real 'Daddy' classic.

Massey College meetings
Massey University started off as Massey College to train agricultural graduates and farmers. Under their new Principal Geoffrey Peren (later Sir Geoffrey) they started farmers' meetings which became the Massey Sheep Farmers' as well as the Massey Dairy Farmers' Conferences which ran for at least five decades.

Below is the cover of a reprint from one of the first meetings in 1932, sponsored by Romney sheep breeders. From the signatures on the front, the reprint has belonged to R. Waters (an early wool scientist) and Prof Al Rae.

In Prof Peren's opening address he is warning farmers that the government's withdrawal of funds for the college will greatly restrict the research programme, as the four teaching staff will be overloaded. So he was asking for financial help from farmers. This has been a familiar tune over the years.


Here's an advertisement in the Proceedings for the College. The fees were fifty guineas per annum!


Dry's famous book

Dry, F.W. The Architecture of Lambs' Coats. A Speculative Study.
Massey University Press, Palmerston North, NZ 1975



The fly leaf contains the following information:

'Citing many facts and ideas from the following companions':
In Massey University

• F.R.M. Cockrem
• A.S. Fraser
• Nancy Galpin
• H. Goot
• Anthea Helford
• R.J. McIntrye
• P.R.McMahon
• Sundara Narayan
• Hazel Riseborough
• D.A.Ross
• Janet M. Ross
• K.M. Rudall
• S.K. Stephenson
• J.A.Sutherland
• G.A. Wickham
• G.M.Wright

In Leeds University

• Marca Burns
• R.A. Guirgis
• C.E. Nash
• J.A. Knott
• C.G. Priestly
• K.M. Rudall
• H.J.A. Side

Dedication
The book is dedicated ‘To the memory of Harry John Allan Side'.

On the back cover
On the back cover is Daddy's potted history in tiny print you need a lens to read.There is also his photo.
His Massey colleague Bob Barton told me what a difficult job it was to get it. Daddy didn't want a full-frontal mug shot of himself, so the photographer had a hard job to get a side view, resulting in Bob being in the frame.

Dry's acknowledgements
This is written in Dry’s classical English, strongly influenced by his Yorkshire precise and economical form of speech. Yorkshire folk waste nowt –especially words. As you can see, Dry loved commas, as they gave great moment to meaning - and didn't spend much on ink too!
To really appreciate it - read it aloud with a Yorkshire accent.

"Those to whom my thanks are due are far too numerous to mention, but my debt is a very special one to the small number now named. The ways of thought revealed trace very largely to my much mentioned Professor of Zoology, Walter Garstang, and my Professor of Botany, J. H. Priestley. The reaction to the universe of my Professor of Geology, P.F. Kendall, was very colourful and inspiring. He filled his science with mirth.

'If by work you mean doing something you don’t like,' he said, “I have never done a day’ work in my life.” In the lecture boastfully reported above I began by mentioning that early in my very first term the founder of the Department of Agriculture, (at Leeds) Professor R.S. Seaton, had told me to study Mendelism as new capital for livestock breeding. Professor A.F. Barker was my imaginative and inspiring host in the development of Textile Industries at Leeds from 1921-1928.

Three prominent farmers in the Manawatu whose co-operation has been of very great theoreticl and practical significance are Holgar Voss, N.P. Neilsen, and D.A. Scott. In the five years after my depart from what is now Massey University the fibre type work was substantially advanced through the hospitality of Professor J.B. Speakman in his Department of Textile Industries in the University of Leeds.

For many years this work was maintained by the support of the New Zealand Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, and it was through the backing of the former Director-General, Dr W.M Hamilton, and of the Vice-Chancellor of Massey University, Dr A. Stewart, that I was able to address myself to writing this book after the responsibility for exploiting the N-gene had passed to younger hands.

I am grateful to Professor T.L.Bywater, Head of the School of Agricultural Sciences in the University of Leeds, for the opportunity to add to and partly revise the script as a member of the organization in which my first piece of research was started. My stay there gave me several new glimpses of the fibre forests.

My colleague, R.A. Barton, has applied his editorial experience and eagle eyes to the final proofs. Besides matters of construction and convention, he has coped with serious errors, defective words, wrong brackets, and the stance of letters. He has cheerfully worn down a task several times as large as ever it entered my head to imagine."

Footnote (from Tim Johnston, Leeds)
Daddy refers to the Founding Professor of Agriculture as R.S. Seton, who, in fact, was the fourth Professor. The first, James Muir, existed from 1891 to 1896. When the East and West Riding County Councils (CCs) took a 30 year lease on Manor Farm, Garforth where Muir suggested that he should be manager.

The CCs of both Ridings set up a Committee to consider this and decided that not only should he not become the manager but that he should NOT continue as Head of the Dept of Agriculture. After a bit of a wrangle, Muir left in 1897 and became the Instructor in Agriculture for the Somerset CC.

Apparently at Leeds he did the minimum of lectures - in those days mainly 'out-reach' work but spent his time writing a textbook 'Agriculture - Practical and Scientific' 1895, and taking more professional examinations. He was MRAC when appointed but also FHAS, MRASE, PASI when he left.

His successor, Dr James Clark, was dismissed in 1898 for carrying on a business expressly forbidden by his contract with the Yorkshire College. It was subsequently found that his degree of MA, Edinburgh was false, as was his claim of a German PhD. Seton, a Scotsman, was eventually appointed, having applied when Clark was appointed and again on Clark's dismissal. Seton came from the Harris Institute at Preston.

Chapter X. Conclusion
The first paragraph again is classical Dr Dry.

“Fibre type details lend themselves poorly to summarizing. A series of mini-essays could resemble lectures that scratch too much ground. A peroration would have a phoney ring, My thoughts slip back to examinations suffered and imposed. Three procedures to my taste, though not often imposed were:

1. To invite the candidates to present scrappy notes, instead of continuous grammatical discourses.
2. To allow notes and books to be brought to the examination.
3. To let the victims answer whatever number of questions they chose.

As to the last, Professor J.H. Priestly explained it was not what they didn’t know that he wanted to find out, but what they did know. To round off this undertaking permit me to provide a series of questions to be answered under the above rules.

He Daddy goes on to present 14 questions. He ends the book with this paragraph:

‘Garstang became Professor of Zoology – as distinct from Biology- in the University of Leeds near the end of the first decade of the present century. Late in 1969 I enjoyed the fun of giving a lecture to the advanced students of Animal Husbandry in the School of Agricultural Sciences of my University sixty years and a few days after going up as a fresher. This was on work on sheep which traced in curiously numerous ways, mundane as well as fanciful, to Garstang.’


Copy in Leeds School of Agriculture library
His copy donated to the old Leeds School of Ag Dept Library has the following inscription:

'With my compliments and lively thanks to the librarians who looked after me in the years 1968 and 1969. Thereby, in my opinion, this story was improved considerably’.

Unsold copies at Massey
Dr George Wickham remembers that the book ended up as ‘the baby’ of Massey Vice Chancellor, Dr Alan Stewart as it was paid for by the University. The Massey Sheep Department were always very skeptical about whether it should be published considering it’s out-of-date technology. There were many copies left unsold.

Typical pages in the back with many pictures of his classified fibre arrays.

Recollections & correspondence ( From Lance Wiggins)
Although not a student of Dr Dry he treated me like one when I joined the NZ Wool Board in 1972. His first contact with me was the following letter which arrived shortly after I began my job in Wellington. I of course was flattered.
Kathleen (my wife) student-flatted in his house in Karaka Street in Palmerston North while Dr Dry was in England in the 1960’s.

(Dr Dry’s Letter)
5 Karaka Street
Palmerston North
New Zealand.
26.11.72

My dear Lance Wiggins
I’ve got to call you something not too formal. For I realize in a way we are related by marriage, two marriages. I understand that in the event of my grandchildren becoming orphans, your wife’s sister would become their guardian.

Concerning Tuki Tuki. After talking on the telephone a time or two, in the course of which I told Mr. Coop that husbandry considerations should decide the shearing date, he concluded that they should be shorn in the week now beginning. He thinks it best not to wait until the first week in January. Their coats are growing fast, and, too, he wants the second shearing not to be thrown too late. So I am to proceed to Tuki Tuki on Wednesday November 29th to sample the animals I sampled earlier.

Yesterday and the day before I was at a conference of the N.Z. Branch of the N.Z. Institute. Dr. Gerald Laxer (or the) Deputy Director of the I.W.S. spoke on The Future of Textile Technology. Looking ahead, over ten years, he said that he expects wool like Drysdale to be very much wanted ten years from now. Which, I take to mean, all the time between now and then, and afterward too.

I saw Dr. Don Ross at the same gathering. I hope you will be able to see him. Mr. Gemmell of U.E.B. was there, but instead of staying until the second day I discovered he had departed the previous evening. So not a word did I have with him.

At the same event I met two members of the firm of N.Z. Woolpacks and Textiles Ltd., Mr. A.L. Muir, “Plant Manager” and Mr. A. A. Wells, “Works Manager”. I learnt that this Foxton firm, by way of diversification, makes some carpet yarns, importing Scottish Blackface wool, material which does not greatly please them, for the hard core of their blend. About half of the yarn is exported, I think to Australia. Not surprisingly they would like some Tukidale, Cumberdale, Drysdale, if so it should be in memory of a former Chairman of the Massey Council.

There is a lot more I want to discuss with you. I will see if I can get you on the telephone in Wellington, on, probably, January 3rd, when we expect to hand this house back to our son.
Much happiness to you and your family in projected movements.

Kind regards,
“Ernest” Dry
Too little time to explain how I got that name.


Dr Dry visited me on several occasions to discuss his work and to ensure that I understood its importance and commercial significance. At the time he was very excited by Malcolm Coop’s “Tukidales” and suggested that I visit him. A very worthwhile visit with a very hospitable farmer.

My enduring memory is of Dry falling asleep in my office mid sentence and feeling terrified that he was dead - yet only two minutes later he woke to continue where he had left off. Most unnerving.

Because of our distant family connection we invited him home on one occasion to stay for the night. When he met Kathleen for the first time and learned that she was a primary teacher he gave us his philosophy on the worth of educators to society. His view was that primary school teachers had the most important and demanding job in education teaching the young to read and write while university teachers taught the more intelligent and able who wanted to learn.
He would reverse their positions and pay the primary teachers a professor’s salary and vice versa.


Hairy shaker disease (from Tim Johnson, Leeds)
I met Daddy Dry when he was visiting Leeds in Spring 1970. He was in the house in Lifton Place and one morning when walking in from Headingly he found a dead squirrel in the gutter at Hyde Park and brought it into the Zoology Department. He was surprised and disappointed that they were not interested in dissecting it!

One day Professor Bywater (HOD) asked me if I would take Dry to Knighton in Radnorshire so that he could visit farms and take wool samples from new-born lambs because Dry believed that the birthcoat fibres could indicate those with Scrapie.

We set off from Leeds in my new car with Mrs Dry (Mammy) in the back. Along the way I saw her through the mirror buttering bread to make a sandwich. I was not amused. We arrived at the Hotel in Knighton and the manageress appeared. Mrs D said 'Oh, it hasn't changed since we were here seven years ago'. Yes , said the manageress we haven't decorated anything.

She then announced to Mrs D – ‘you are on the second floor and Mr D is on the third’. Mammy D turned to me and said 'we have separate rooms because he sleeps with the window open and I sleep with it closed.

Dry had arranged for us to visit several farmers that were into their lambing season. It was a cold Easter time and we would get onto a farm in biting winds and the farmer would hold a lamb while D snipped of a few fibres and put the into a labeled envelope in his inside raincoat pocket.

These fibres would later be examined under a microscope to see the tips:

• Straight = Normal
• Curled = Scrapie.

He had battles with the Veterinary profession who poopood his thesis. One day at lunch, Mrs D said that she had been listening to the Government Medical Officer for Health at a Conference in Brighton who had said that anybody at 80 years old should be able to select euthanasia. She poked Dr D with the comment 'only two years Daddy'.

On the Saturday we were to return to Leeds, but I was staying near Burton on Trent so I took them to Derby Station. As we set off, Mrs D said that she needed a pint of milk (What, in the Welsh borders?). We suddenly saw a milk tanker so she said stop him for a pint of milk, please. I didn't

We got to Derby Railway Station at about 3-00pm and I thought where the hell can we find milk: she will have to get it at Leeds. However, I nipped out of the car and told them to get out with their luggage while I went into the street. Believe it or not, there was a milk float returning to its depot. I bought a pint, took it back and dumped it in Mrs D's lap! They went for the train and I went home.

The stuffed rooster (from the late Graeme Hight)
Daddy always used to come into the class to deliver his genetics lectures with a stuffed rooster under one arm and his yellowing notes under the other. He never did get round to using this avian visual aid. At least they all remembered that even if they forgot everything else.

Other old students remember that he always came to class with a stack of textbooks which he never referred to.

The dustbin on the bus (from the late Graeme Hight)
Daddy arrived at Massey University on the bus one morning with the dustbin under his arm. When it was pointed out to him, he then remembered that he meant to leave it at the gate to be emptied.

Cricket analogies (from Clive Dalton)
Daddy being a good Yorkshireman knew his cricket.When he was at Whatawhata we worked out that the carpet company UEB who had control of supplying Drysdale rams had been supplying heterozygous rams as well as homozygous ones. Using the heterozygous ones meant it took longer to product the real high quality carpet fibre.

I suggested to Daddy that he should contact the big cheeses at UEB and get stuck into them. His reply in his carefully chosen Yorkshire prose was:

‘No, No, I think not. When I retire, there were two things I swore I would no do – one was to step out of my crease, and the other was to hit the ball in the air’!

Dry at the NZ Society of Animal Production conferences (from Clive Dalton)
In the 1970s – 80s Dry was regularly attended the APS conferences and always sat in the very front row. At question time he would stand up not being able to hear that someone else had grabbed the floor.

He would sort of ‘unfold’ from his seat and always had the manners to half turn around to address the audience as he offered his ‘observation – not a question Mr Chairman’. It was regularly about when the work had been done 40 years ago (which the current young scientist didn’t know!) and how the answer was a lemon then too.

Once when chairing a session I stupidly handed him the microphone so we could hear his comments, and then had a hell of a job getting it back off him to shut him up. I was looking for the plug to pull it out.
‘Thank you Dr Dry, Thankyou Dr Dry, THANK YOU DR DRY’, didn’t seem to work! Lesson - never give Daddy the microphone

'I’ll just go and get Daddy for you' (from Boyd Wilson)
My closest encounters with Daddy Dry were in Palmerston North, perhaps 1972. I was then the NZ Farmer southern bloke (yes, bloody Aucklanders reckoned the Manawatu was in the centre of the South Island). Anyway, I think Daddy initiated the relationship when he confirmed what he proclaimed as a "new" hairy gene in Romneys in the Coop family flock at Tukituki, Hawke's Bay. I think it was Daddy who named the sheep "Tukidales." Can't recall details: I think they were confirmed homozygotes and they were good enough sheep, but suspect they soon became old news.
I can still hear old Mrs D's voice whenever I phoned to check on a fact: ‘I'll just go and get Daddy for you’.

I can’t find my bike anywhere (from Geoffrey Moss)
There were some great characters on the Massey staff when I was a student (part time) there over 1948-53 and Dr Dry, our genetics lecturer, was a real ‘absent-minded professor’. One night very late he knocked on my door and asked if I owned a motorbike, and if so, would I mind running him home? 'I must have come out from town this morning on the bus because I can’t find my bike anywhere,' he explained.

He was a respected academic and a likeable eccentric and we were all fond of him so I took him home on the back of my Harley with a heavy pack on his back.

Each evening he would go home with two big Winchester jars full of Massey water in his pack because he and Mammy Dry refused to drink the city's chlorinated water. He did this for years and everyone knew about it.

We had an oral and a written exam for the genetics final exams. In the written exam we were permitted to take in any books we liked, but the questions were so designed that books were useless. My oral exam was held late at night. When I entered, Dr Dry invited me to sit down. 'Tell me all you know about eugenics', he said, as he proceeded to pull out a loaf of bread, a bread knife, some butter and a pot of jam and have his evening meal.


Brown envelopes and black velvet (from Clive Dalton)
When ready for the field, Daddy always carried his set of gear in the deep inside pockets of his fading brown Gabadine raincoat. Any hope of it turning rain had long gone. His gear consisted of:

• One pair of surgical scissors with upturned points.
• A pack of brown ‘government’ envelopes held by a thick elastic band.
• Pointed tweezers.
• A piece of black velvet about 6 inches square to put on his knee to show up white fibres for inspection.
• Small lens.
• A sandwich

His headgear was either an English style cap or a gamekeepers helmet with side flaps to tie under his chin if things got really rough.

A fibre waiting for an array (from Clive Dalton)
When at Whatawhata, we gave Daddy the full run of the wool lab to examine the samples he’d collected for the station’s Drysdale rams that day. Here he had more black velvet laid out as well as the contents of the brown envelopes, all with information in his spidery handwriting.

I went to the station one evening and saw the lights on in the lab and there he was sorting his fibres into his famous ‘arrays’. He had one fibre in a pair of tweezers when I went in and he held it there for at least half an hour of our discussions. I sort of followed him around the lab in our chat and he never let go of the fibre. I bet he knew into which ‘array’ it fitted - probably one of his favourite ‘Super sickle fibres’.

N type sheep as lawn mowers (from Clive Dalton)
The Massey Sheep Department under Prof Geoffrey Peren got tired of Dry’s hairy rams on the farm and they came under threat of slaughter. At that time, Peren was driving research in the crossing of the Cheviot on to the Romney to develop a more productive active sheep for hard hill country. The result in time became 'the Perendale' breed.

Dry was strongly advised to find his sheep, especially the rams a new home. Daddy solved the problem by farming them out to his friends in Palmerston North who tethered their allocated sheep to graze their lawns or back sections. If they had all gone to the butcher, the Drysdale and its great contribution to the New Zealand carpet trade would never have happened.

A brand new Raleigh 20 (from Clive Dalton)
When Daddy finally came back to New Zealand from Leeds, by then well into his 80s, he must have gone ‘right daft’ for a Yorkshireman who was always canny with his ‘brass’ . To everyone’s amusement and amazement, he bought a brand new Raleigh 20! This bike with its small wheels, low crossbar and good sound carrier was 'top of the line' at the time. Everyone commented that Daddy clearly had no intentions of giving up the struggle for a while yet, which was true.

None of the recorded anecdotes ever mentions Daddy driving a car.


Ruakura Farmer's Conference. Hairy genes in New Zealand

Drysdale staple from one-year fleece

When we started a Drysdale flock at the Whatawhata Research Station to be included in our breed comparison trials, we gave a paper at the Ruakura Farmer’s Conference which was published in the 1973 Conference Proceedings. Here are some bits from it:

DC Dalton, ML Bigham and LK Wiggins.
Special Carpet-wool Sheep.
Proceedings of the Ruakura Farmer’s Conference, 1973. 21-33.

The N gene

Drysdale rams showing the hairy fleece and strong horns

This gene was discovered in a Romney ram by Dr Dry in a flock owned by Mr Neilson of Palmerston North; hence the symbol N given to it by Dr Dry. Dry worked out the basic inheritance of the gene over a period of years and its action is now fairly clearly understood.

The two most important features of the N gene are that it is almost completely dominant, and it influences the lamb birth coat as well as the adult fleece. It seems essential to a successful hairy sheep-breeding programme that all breeders should be familiar with the classification of lambs’ birth coats, and should include birth-coat classification into their basic flock recording.

The horns on the Drysdale increase management problems, but as yet no effective solution has been found to banishing them either by genetic or by non-genetic means. Few hairy sheep in the world appear to be free from horns.

The T gene

Dr Dry with what we think is a Tukidale.
Photo from Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand

This gene was discovered by Mr M.W.Coop of Tuki Tuki in Hawkes Bay in 1966 in a hairy ram lamb which had been reared as a pet lamb. It was found to be a dominant gene (called T after the farm) which caused complete hair cover especially in the Tt sheep.

There were no apparent birth coat variations with the T gene as with the N gene. This makes identification of genetic makeup impossible without progeny testing. Because the fleeces of the heterozygous Tt are completely hairy, the transition form ordinary wool to a specialty carpet wool is achieved in one cross.

Horns are linked with the hairy fleece as with the N gene, except that all the Tt ewes have short spiky horns and the rams have heavy horns. Performance traits of the Tukidale are similar to the Romney.

The K gene
Professor K.B. Cumberland and his son Garth obtained two hairy rams and seven hairy ewes from a Mr L. Johnstone at Te Puke. Some hair sheep from this farm were also transferred to the property of Mr B. Johnstone of Kamano near Cheltenham. Initial test mating were carried out by the Cumberlands in 1972 to see if the sheep were carrying a dominant gene, and the results indicate that they were. The named it the K gene.

Mr B. Johstone considers that the K gene is the same as the N gene but Dr Dry has found no evidence to suggest that the K gene differs from the T gene and is firmly convinced that the K and T differ from the N gene.

These sheep and their progeny are now being used to breed a new carpet-wool breed based solely on Perendales which have high fertility, open faces, easy-care traits and fleeces of low lustre and high resilience. Carpet sheep derived from the N, T or K gene mated to high-fertility Perendale ewes are to be called 'Carpetmasters' and will be designated Carpetmaster N, T or K depending on what gene is present.


The B gene
In addition to the K gene, the Cumberlands have also found the B gene which Dr Dry considers to be different from N, T and K genes. The gene originated from a southern Hawkes Bay flock in 1972. The ram had a very low fleece weight and though his progeny have not been shorn as hoggets, they appear to also have low fleece weight which could eliminate this gene from commercial use.

There is some evidence however, that this sheep is producing wool similar t that produced by Indian carpet-wool breeds. This wool is comparatively fine and very highly regarded by the trade.

Drysdale breeding
Dr Dry worked all this out in his work at Massey. It’s the classical ratios ‘discovered’ the famous Austrian monk, Gregor Mendel in his garden where he grew sweet peas – subsequently called ‘Mendelism”.

Generations of students have been put off animal breeding by having this information hammered into them by lecturers who didn’t seem to realise it had little application in large animal breeding – unless you were breeding Drysdale sheep or the horns off cattle!

This was the notation used for the genes at the time:

1. (NN x NN = all NN).
This is the Drysdale crossed with a Drysdale. Both parents are homozygous with the dominant allele ‘N’.

2. (nn x nn + all nn).
This is the Romney x Romney which gives all Romneys. Both parents are homozygous and have the recessive allele ‘n’

3. (NN x nn = all Nn)
This is the Drysdale x Romney where all the offspring are heterozygotes.

4. (NN x Nn = 1NN: 1 Nn)
This is the Drysdale crossed back across the heterozygote to give straight Drysdales and heterozgotes in the ratio of 1:1.

5. (Nn x Nn = 1NN: 2 Nn: 1nn)
This is crossing two heterozygotes which produces all three types, straight Drysdales, more heterozygotes and straight Romneys, always in this 1:2:1 ratio.


Updated symbol for alleles (From Dr George Wickham)
Information produced for article in NZ Black and Coloured Sheep Breeders Association publication, 19??. This shows the updated terminology the COGNOSAG (Committee on the Genetic Nomenclature of Sheep and Goats). Dr Wickham adds that things will change once gene mapping advances further knowledge.

The Drysdale arose as an offshoot of the Romney. In the 1930s some wool manufacturers criticised Romney wool as being too hairy for their products. As part of a research program into the problem a flock of sheep with extremely medullated wool was selected and studied. By the 1950s these sheep had been intensively studied from a genetic and a wool growth point of view.

The descendants of two of the original rams introduced into the flock were shown to have a semi-dominant gene (initially named N, then Nd , later HH1N ) and the wool of these sheep was like that of the Scottish Blackface, a type needed as part of the wool blend for some sorts of carpets. At this time there was a shortage of this type of wool and, at one stage, Blackface wool was selling at a higher price that average Merino wool. HH was the code for High Halo Hair.

During the 1960s, commercial flocks of Drysdales were established by mating rams homozygous for the N gene to Romney and a few Perendale ewes. Lambing performance of the flocks which have descended from these have tended to be like that of Romney flocks. Initially there was a marked advantage in terms of profits from wool. Although still tending to be slightly in favour of the Drysdale this advantage declined as numbers and total wool production increased to the point where supply more-closely matched demand. Another factor in this equation is a tendency for most manufacturers of wool carpets to now use fibre blends that contain less medullated wool.

Most of the sheep we farm have been selected for a type of fleece in which all fibres are relatively similar in size and nature. In contrast a Drysdale fleece is a mixture of fibres which can differ markedly. About 25% by numbers are medullated (hollow). Some of these are kemps which only grow for a few months and moult when a new fibre starts to grow. These tend to be over 100 microns in diameter and 50-100mm long (unless cut at shearing).

Other medullated fibres are finer (50-90 microns) and grow continuously (about 20mm per month). Most (in terms of numbers but not weight) are finer still (15-45 microns) non-medullated and continuously growing (about 10mm per month). Thus the mean diameter (micron) used to classify other types of wool is meaningless in Drysdales.

Two similar breeds first arose in New Zealand but are now only found in Australia. The Tukidale was developed using another, more-dominant, allele at the N (HH1) locus (HH1T). This was found in a Romney flock. The Carpetmaster breed was developed partly from descendants of a carpet-wooled ram found in a Border Leicester x Romney flock. This ram carried a gene at the N locus that might have been identical to the gene in Tukidales. Sheep carrying the Nd were also introduced into Carpetmaster flocks.

Memory: Dr Doug Lang when at Massey as students spent quite a bit of time helping Doc. Doug and I used to go off together with Dr Dry on our push bikes. We developed a technique to allow us to get home before midnight when it came to culling etc.

One of us would read the sheep's ear tag and then we would leave him to mull over his thoughts (talking to himself and maybe us) for 2-3 minutes, and then we would make the decision for him on the basis of what we had heard. If we left him to his own thoughts it could take half an hour for one sheep.

Looking back, what was Dry's contribution?

A memorable photo I took at the Whatawhata Hill Country Research Station in the early 1980s.
Stockman Ian McMillan holds a Drysdale ram, and Dr Murray Bigham is doing the recording for Dr Dry.

From Dr George Wickham
I suspect Dry's main contribution was interacting with graduate students. Some of the early Massey graduates had a pretty significant effect on New Zealand, Australian and UK animal production, and Dry probably had a significant effect on their thinking.

Ted Clarke and Al Rae, although only partly with him, were instrumental in sheep and cattle breeding. McMeekan's early papers on pig genetics suggest a Dry input in his graduate research.

Of those working on wool directly with him, Nancy Galpin extended our knowledge of follicle development, went to work with Wildman at Torridon in Leeds but didn't continue. Pat McMahon did a great job in Australia straightening out thinking on the relationship between wool traits and processing, and Don Ross extended this in NZ.

I think the mouse hair growth paper probably was his most important research. It really set the scene for a great deal of subsequent research on hair cycles in other species and the control and onset of different phases. The lamb fibre type studies have been unrewarding and if the same time had been put into other studies, that time might have been better used.

The work on the genetics of the Drysdale had a pretty big effect on the viability of carpet manufacture in NZ at a time when carpeting and carpet yarn was difficult to market unless it contained about 10-20% of medullated wool. If the manufacturers had continued to get their medullated wool from UK (often very poor stuff), they would not have lasted as long as they did. I suspect the farmers did not do as well out of the Drysdales as the processors did.

Dry got very obsessed with fibre type work and why he didn't move sideways to examine the validity of some of the theories he hatched needs to be considered.

I guess his training in Zoology at a time when Zoology was an observation and classification- based science with little experimentation was a major factor. It seems likely that his move into Mendelism was a little late and he never developed good skills in experimental design.

Also, while he encouraged post-grad students to approach new people in other fields and to broaden the techniques available to them, he did little to try new techniques himself. Despite being a great conference attender in New Zealand, he was fairly introverted, and this might have been a factor in his reluctance to move outside his comfort zone.

Memorial to the Drysdale
All that remains of the many Drysdale flocks

Breeding sheep to eliminate dags and worms. 1.

By Dr Clive Dalton

PART 1


Introduction

• Farmers used genetics to improve fertility in their commercial sheep flocks in the 1970s - 1980s, and this greatly improved income.
  
• But with recent inflation and currency fluctuations, they realise that more lambs are not all profit.
  
• Rising costs, especially for animal health are now a major issue, but veterinary science has not come up with ways to reduce these; so-called progress seems to be to use more!

Dagging and drenching

• These are the two main killers in terms of cost and physical effort, as sheep farmers’ average age is now creeping up towards 60, with fewer young people entering the industry, or who want to spend their time wrestling with today’s 80kg sheep.
• Many sheep farmers have back, hip and knee problems from hauling sheep around, and the veterinary profession are only offering more drug and chemical therapy as future solutions, which will not reduce costs.
• This approach is not sustainable – neither economically nor for the environment.
  
• So the obvious conclusion is that we have to stop, (or at least greatly reduce), dagging and drenching sheep.
  
• If you don’t agree, and are happy to get the handpiece out to clean up sheep like the one below, then don’t read further.

What a prospect to have to clean up this sheep's rear end!

Major mind change needed

Sheep are never keen to cooperate

• Dagging (to prevent blowfly) and drenching (to kill worms) have always been accepted as part of sheep husbandry.
• So has crutching, most of which is done to prevent dags forming.
• You never see these chores featured in a shepherd’s job description: they are taken for granted.
• If the boss had no jobs planned, then he/she could always find some dagging or drenching to do to keep staff active and give the dogs a run!

This advert in a 1970 New Zealand Farmer was certainly convincing.
Back then, nobody thought about long-term implications of the
new wonder chemicals!

Breeding is the solution

• Breeding is the way to get rid of the endless chore of dagging and drenching, which inevitably is followed by more dagging and drenching.
• The chemicals used in drenches cannot be sustainable, and consumers will start to demand ‘drug-free’ products for their health and welfare.
• Genetic gains are cost effective and they are not lost.
• But breeding as a solution has been hard to get through to farmers, as since the modern anthelmintics came on the market in the 1960s, farmers have been bombarded by myths and untruths.
  

Myths & untruths

A typical range of anthelmintic chemotherapy products on the market.
Sold in bright coloured packs with regular promotional specials.

• Breeding is too slow. Breeding for Facial Eczema (FE) resistance for example took nearly 30 years. True but there are reasons – see below.
• Drench is faster, and with the new products on the market that kill everything, the problem of drench resistance has been solved. Not true.
• Vets who sell drench hardly ever mention genetics to their clients. If they do, it’s always as a last resort. Drench sales are a significant part of vets' income and the more they sell the bigger markup they can negotiate from the manufacturer supplying them.
  
• Genetics doesn’t seem to figure strongly in their university training, and in any case they don’t sell rams from their clinics!
• If you start a breeding programme, you’ll be buried in paper and will need a computer. Not true.
  

Breeding for FE resistance – why it took so long?

Hogget with FE which is clearly suffering pain and distress.
It also cannot see as its eye lids are swollen up.

There were plenty of reasons:

• The sporidesmin toxin harvested from the fungus was so horrendously expensive that stud breeders could only afford to dose a few of their rams.
• It’s a very dangerous poison and has to be handled carefully by veterinarians, and if not done correctly valuable animals can be killed.
• Farmers couldn’t afford to drench any females, so halving the overall ‘Selection Differential’ (selection pressure) and slowing up genetic gain, despite the trait being highly heritable (about 25% or the same as fleece weight).
• Selection on the ewe side had to rely on ‘natural challenge’ to the toxin, which varied greatly between seasons.
• Commercial sheep farmers only bought FE tested rams after a bad season, and expected instant solutions the next season. They didn’t have a policy of buying resistant rams every year.
• Farmers turned their purchased FE resistant rams out with their commercial ewes and expected to see rapid gains. This random mating approach could never bring rapid improvement.
• Because tested rams were expensive, farmers only bought one or two, when they should have bought a team of rams to bring about positive change.
• So, many stud breeders gave it away, as there was no profit in the business. Only the dedicated kept going to benefit their own flocks, which they certainly did. Now in bad years they hardly ever see a clinical case of FE.
• With today’s knowledge and technology, success could be achieved in a quarter of the time.
  

How did FE resistance work?

• Scientists worked hard to find out how resistant sheep could break down the toxin’s complex chemical structure in the liver, and get rid of it. It was a fascinating bit of detective work at Ruakura, which I don’t think was fully completed.
• In simple terms, the sheep’s immune system did the work, so breeders were actually selecting for sheep with better genetic immune systems.
• This is very interesting, as the pioneer breeders today (along with their ram buying clients), are finding their sheep don’t get grass staggers (another fungal toxin), and have fewer internal parasites as judged by less drench needed.
• So to select against dags and worms, we need to identify sheep with a high natural (genetic) immune system, and manage them to allow it to be fully expressed.
• It’s a simple objective and is really a repeat of breeding for FE tolerance, but in a very much shorter time.
  

Dags and worms – why fix them in this order?

• Because this is the order in which they cause pain to the farmer.
  
• With dagging you have to wrestle with sheep before staying bent over, to remove a worthless product. And then being in constant contact with faeces is also a health hazard.
• Even if you have modern sheep handling equipment, physical effort is still needed and costs didn’t disappear.
  
• Drenching is not so bad, as you stand upright but with no automatic drenchers invented yet, stretching and being bumped by sheep, and perhaps even being bitten are still hazards!
  

Are these traits inherited?

• Yes they are.
  
• The heritability of dags is around 25% and resistance to worms (also called host resistance) is around 23-25 %.
  
• You will see ‘resilience’ used which is where a sheep can live with worms and still keep performing.
  
• If this is a separate trait, (and scientists state that it is), we don’t want it as these sheep produce dags.
  
• We only want sheep that are Worm-Free and Dag-Free.

Are the traits linked?

• Technically, dags and worm resistance are separate traits so are not linked through common genes.
  
• But there are farmers who have cleaned up the dags in their flocks (measured in barrow loads), and are finding that worms, (measured by the number of drenches given) are very apparent.
  
• This may be entirely environmental and not genetic, but at this stage why worry – it’s saving work and money. So keep an open mind at this stage.

Breeding sheep to eliminate dags and worms. 2.

By Dr Clive Dalton

PART 2

Dag-Free & Worm-Free sheep – where to start?
Commercial sheep farmers have two options if they want to get rid or drastically reduce dags and worms:

Option1. Buy in the genetics (as rams) needed from established ‘stud breeders’.

Option 2. Start a breeding programme in their own flock, which includes breeding their own rams.

Option1. Buy genetics from stud breeders.

Stud rams at public sale. FEC data are rare and Dag information non existent.
All rams are drenched frequently before sale.

• Buying the genetics (as rams) from stud breeders seems the logical choice, as ‘stud breeders with registered flocks have been providing rams (and assumed genetic improvement) for commercial breeders since sheep farming began in New Zealand.
• They record masses of data through Sheep Improvement Ltd (SIL) database via a number of bureaus.
  
• But it’s often this mass of data that scares commercial buyers away. Stud breeders have all worked hard over many generations and none got rich from selling rams.
  
• Few commercial buyers appreciate the costs, dedication and work involved in stud breeding.
  

Selection indexes

SIL Ram selection front page listing all the Indexes
There are 5 indexes and 11 Breeding Values provided.

• The core of the SIL data provided to commercial farmers on the ‘ram selection list’ is in the ‘indexes’ and ‘sub indexes’, and there’s a range of them.
• Breeding Values (BVs) are first calculated for each trait using all the information on the animal and its relatives.
• They are then balanced up for varying genetic relationships between them and finally balanced for the relative economic value of each one. This is to achieve maximum overall gain expressed in cents.
  
• See SIL website for details.
• But geneticists never tell you how long it will take to see this overall and balanced improvement expressed in the index, in the bank account. Time is not built into the index – it cannot be.
• The old genetic principle is well known – ‘that the more traits you select for, the slower is the rate of progress in any individual one’.
• My concern is that today’s sheep farmers don’t have time to wait for these sophisticated indexes with all the various economic traits to bring about improved overall income, of which dags and worms are only a part.
• If you want to fix dags and worms on ‘Fast Track’ because they are killing you and your profits, you need to hit them hard, and not let the rest of the index components slow you down.

Ram selection list showing extensive data on each animal.
This regularly scares ram buyers so they end up picking rams on their looks.

Special concern over dags and worms
The obvious conclusion: Farmers need to get rid of dags and worms on fast track as there’s nothing more important on a sheep farm right now.

Using ‘Independent Culling Levels’

• We need to treat dags and worm resistance as ‘Independent Culling Levels’.
• This is where you select for each trait independently (as they are unrelated), and if an animal fails to reach the pass mark for one trait (whatever level you set the pass mark at), then it fails the whole exam.
  
• It’s like what the old School Certificate used to be – if you failed one critical subject like maths, no matter how good you were at the others – you failed the lot. It was tough.
• Using the index approach, excellence in one trait can compensate for failure in another. This is not good enough to get rid of both dags and worms quickly – which is urgent right now.
  

The BIG problem:
Finding SIL breeders with Dag-Free and Worm-Free sheep

• Very few SIL breeders have taken the option to select for host resistance to worms, and fewer still are selecting against dags to provide Breeding Values (BVs) for these traits.
  
• This is understandable, as their clients are not asking for such rams. The new drench chemicals have now come along as the ultimate solution.
• The BV for worm resistance (called WormFEC™) is based on a flexible protocol, (too flexible in my view) allowing great variation in FEC sampling times and methods, so accuracy for selection purposes has got to be a concern.
• For those with WormFEC™ BVs, not all the lamb crop is always put up for testing, and this is often not made clear. So the choice of rams for sale within a flock can be very limited.
• These BVs only apply within farms and not between them.
• It would be hard to find a stud breeder who had not drenched the sale rams for at least two months before your visit. This is the minimal period needed to get an honest drug-free assessment of how genetically daggy individuals are.
• Farmers are told by stud breeders, technical advisers and stock agents, that if they stop selecting rams for the main economic traits like fertility and growth (wool doesn’t worry them), then these traits will go backwards in their flock.
• This is NOT true; they’ll just stay where they are, until selection moves things ahead again. You’d be hard put to select against these traits to start and lose them.
• Ignoring the other main traits won’t drive you bankrupt for a couple of generations at least till you make a big dent in dags and worms.
  

Obvious conclusion: The choice of getting Dag-Free and Worm-Free rams from SIL breeders is very limited, so you need to look at starting a breeding programme in your own commercial flock.


Option 2. Start a breeding programme in your own flock.


What’s wrong with the idea?
Here’s some facts and fiction that you hear:

• Fiction: Breeding is too much work and you’ll be buried in paper, stuck in the office when you should be outside – presumably dagging and drenching! Not true.
• Fact: All you need to get started is some raddle and some tags (which may as well be numbered). Later on you may need to use your index finger!
• Fiction: The genetics in your flock are not good enough as stud breeders have all the superior genes. Not true. This is biologically impossible.
• Fact: If you’ve been buying rams from the same stud breeder for a number of years, you’ll have all the genes they have. Your flock will genetically be a couple of generations behind that stud.
  

The big positives

Sheep selected and bred on your farm will perform well on your farm.

• You’ll be identifying top genetics in your own farming environment, and that’s a massive advantage. There’s no worry over whether a stud’s sheep will ‘shift well’ and adapt to your farm and management.
• You don’t have to keep trying different studs in different areas to see which suits your environment. On your own farm – what you see is what you get, and you certainly can’t hide how much time and money has been spent on dagging and drench!
• Also, because of the large numbers of animals in a commercial flock, there is a mass of scope for selection and culling, which many smaller studs don’t have. A high proportion of the ram lambs born in many small studs have to be sold as sires to make money.