New Zealand agricultural history. No 12. Importing exotic sheep breeds

 Selection of sheep in Scandinavia

 Where the sheep came from

By Dr Clive Dalton

Selection of sheep in Scandinavia

Dr Leyden Baker

Dr Leyden Baker from MAF Ruakura Genetics was assigned responsibility to travel to Denmark and Finland to select the sheep for the 1984 importation, accompanied by MAF veterinarian Dr Stuart MacDiarmid.  Their first task was to find the sheep (both ewes and rams) for purchase or lease, and then before organising their assembly at central locations in each country ready for mating and the collection. to  check veterinary details and organise the collection of embryos (undertaken by Dr Robin Tervit – see other blogs).

Leyden had good contacts in Scandinavia as he had done post-Doctoral research in Norway in 1976 and again in 1983, and traveled extensively to animal breeding institutes in Denmark Sweden and Finland.  

 When in Norway in 1983, Leyden was very surprised to get a phone call from Ruakura Director Ken Jury to say that off the record at that stage, it was starting to look as if the importation ‘sheep show’ was on the road again, and would he stay a few more weeks (salary provided) to have a nosey around to see what sheep there were in Denmark, Sweden and Finland of the breeds New Zealand wanted – mainly Texels, Oxford Downs and Finnish Landrace.  Norway didn’t qualify as they didn’t have any of these breeds at this time.

Having Leyden in Scandinavia at that time was an enormous bit of good fortune for the NZ government and MAFTech, as it wasn’t hard to find out what was going on in the sheep business because of his contacts with genetics mates who all knew each other, and were involved in a lot of cooperative work. 

Leyden said the Finn and Texel flocks were small, the place was crawling with vets with about one for every ten farms, and the farmers were great hosts just like Kiwis being very willing to cooperate to sell sheep to New Zealand.   

There was no official recording scheme like we had in New Zealand and the records farmers kept were mainly pedigrees.  But they knew every sheep and how it had performed if you asked them.  Denmark had a central ram progeny test station where some useful data could be obtained.  It was decided that there was nothing to be gained in trying to access these breeds in Sweden, and in addition facilities for embryo transfer work were limited.

So after Leyden came back on New Zealand in 1983 to carry on his cattle and sheep breeding work at Ruakura genetics section, when the sheep importation became a real deal, it made sense for Director Ken Jury (pictured left) to get Leyden to go back to Scandinavia and get down to the serious business with Stuart MacDiarmid and Dr Robin Tervit of finding the sheep, getting them to central locations to do all the reproductive wizardry.

Leyden tells the tale of going to one lady breeder of Finn sheep in Finland and the sheep were not around as it was summer and they were in the paddock.  With one call the whole mob came racing over as they’d been brought up with a feed bucket spending five months indoors every year during winter.  But the big laugh was when Leyden asked about a particular ewe to inspect her.  All the breeder did was call  the sheep’s name and out she trotted from the mob to be examined!  Every sheep in the flock answered to its name!

Leyden also remembers going to one Finn breeder to buy three rams, and after the negotiations, they said they’d be back to collect them as they only had a car. No problem said the breeder who put each ram in a sack tied at the neck before putting it in the car boot! 

Deal done!  But on the way home Leyden and driver stopped in a forest to check the rams, and on opening the boot, one ram that had got out of its sack jumped out and headed for home.  It took hours to catch him Leyden said.

Leyend remembers Roger Marshall's assistance

Roger  Marshall went to Europe representing NZ sheep breeders and was  with Eric Claussen and I during the selection of the Texels and Oxford Downs in Denmark. As Roger's report showed he went to Finland before I did and inspected some of the sheep there and sent me a report on this trip.

Where the sheep came from?

Here’s a summary of the actual flocks and numbers

Breed	Country	Flock source	No. Flocks	Ewes mated	Rams mated	Donor ewes	No embryos
Oxford	Denmark	Industry	17	46	14	21	64
Texel	Denmark	Industry	18	47	11	31	136
Texel	Finland	Peksala	1	23	5	5	95
Finn	Finland	Industry	12	29	9	23	126
Finn	Finland	Kuuma	1	18	8	16	127

After being tested on each farm for maedi visna, Chlamydia and brucella ovis, the Danish sheep were assembled in a barn near Copenhagan and the Finns in a barn near Jokioinen to carry out all the treatments needed to finally end up with frozen embryos fit for transport to New Zealand. All ewes were purchased by the NZ Government except the Kuuma Finns which were leased.

New Zealand agricultural history. No 13. Importing exotic sheep breeds

 Harvesting the exotic sheep embryos in Denmark and Finland
Dr Robin Tervit’s involvement

More of Robin Tervit's memories 

 By Dr Clive Dalton

 After the disaster of MAF's first importation of exotic sheep breeds as live animals in 1972 , the second importation in 1984 was only be allowed by MAF and the Maximum Security Quarantine Advisory Committee (MSQAC) as frozen embryos and frozen semen.  Denmark and Finland had the sheep the New Zealand MAF Research Geneticists wanted, and their health standards were also acceptable for importation.

 Harvesting embryos

Harvesting the embryos involved massive cooperation and help from people in both countries to help Dr Robin Tervit from Ruakura who had overall responsibility to harvest the frozen embryos for the importation.

 Photo shows Dr Robin Tervit recovering embryos from the exposed uterus and fallopian tubes of a donor ewe in Finland. Dr Vesa Rainio from Finland is assisting.  Stuart McDiamid in background.  Photo: Robin Tervit.


Robin remembers being called to Agricultural Research Director Dr John Hutton’s office to discuss the ET work he was about to undertake in Europe, and coming away with the clear message that his rear end would be in trouble if he didn’t get good embryo survival results post freezing. Hutton was clearly under the gun from higher up the MAF hierarchy, and he was never a man who liked to back down on issues.  Fortunately, Robin got good results with help from local colleagues.

In the  programme, the embryos for export had to be washed 10 times before freezing to ensure they were not contaminated by any disease organisms not wanted in New Zealand.  This was a fairly new development at the time.  Semen from each breed was also processed and frozen for transport to New Zealand.

Dr Robin Tervit’s involvement

I asked Robin some questions about what he’d been up to with his ET work in Denmark and Finland.These are his replies:

How long were you working on the sheep?

Late August 1984 through late October in Denmark, and late September through late November in Finland. The Danish ewes were divided into 3 groups and one group treated per week for 3 weeks from late August. The interval from start of treatment to surgery was about 40 days and so the ewes were operated on and embryos recovered during the first 3 weeks in October. 

We left Denmark during the early treatment phase of the Danish ewes, and started the Finnish ewe treatment about a month later than the Danish ewes (i.e. in late September/early October). Finn surgery was about a month later than in Denmark (November). So, I was away from NZ for just over 3 months.

Were there any Kiwis helping you? 

Yes, MAF veterinarian Stuart MacDiarmid was with me for the whole time. He was responsible for animal health issues and also did a lot of the surgery on the donors. 

I recovered the embryos from the uterine washings and then processed them through the freezing process. I accompanied the frozen embryos back to NZ.  



 Full technical details are given in the 1986 paper below.

Tervit H R, Baker R L, Hoff-Jorgenson R, Lintukongos S, MacDiarmid S C, Rainio V. 1986. Viability of frozen sheep embryos and semen imported from Europe.  Proceedings of the New Zealand Society of Animal Production 46:245-250.

More of Robin Tervit's memories  

 Denmark

 The donors were housed in a lovely historic barn which was not being used by anyone. I can still see the Danes' look of disbelief when we took to the pens with a spanner and sledge hammer to make them large enough to accommodate the large donors and their rams. 

Surgery was conducted at the vet school in Copenhagen and went very well. The only problem was that the vet students assisting us started to get difficult to commit to assisting with the surgery. We discovered that they were not getting paid – a talk to Leyden Baker soon sorted this out.

Stuart McDiarmid and I stayed in a hotel in Copenhagen and , after traveling to Finland to begin the donor hormone treatments, we returned to our hotel to find that we had been evicted and replaced with some refugees from the Middle East. No attempt had been made to find us alternative accommodation, so we had to go and find somewhere else to live.

Finland

Conditions were nowhere near as salubrious as in Denmark – but everything worked well showing that you don’t need fancy facilities to achieve good results. The animal housing barn was old and the water pipes froze, with the result that we had to carry drinking water to the animals when it got cold. The donors were carried to and from the surgery in a VW Combi van. The surgery was in an adjacent building and the embryologist (me) was squashed into one corner.

Stuart and I were accommodated in a house near the animal barns. It had a sauna but since we did not share the Finnish enthusiasm for hot rooms we used it mainly to dry our clothes. We did have some saunas with Finnish people, and I still remember the heat hitting the lining of the nose – boy they liked the temperature high.

It snowed while we were in Finland and though it was cold this was balanced by the brilliant northern lights.

 Roger Marshall's role.
Noted Coopworth breeder and New Zealand Meat Board member as asked to visit Denmark and Finland in 1984 on behalf of the NZ United Breed Societies to approve the sheep that were going to provide the genetics (embryos and semen) for the  NZ sheep industry.  It was an important responsibility and Roger was certainly an ideal person to do the job. 

He worked in cooperation with breed society executives in both countries and Dr Leyden Baker from MAF.  He reported his work to the UBS on 11/9/1984.