New Zealand agricultural history. No 21. Importing exotic sheep breeds

 

Animal Enterprises importation 1986

Live animals imported

Finn, Texel, East Friesian, Gotland Pelt, White Headed Marsh

Quarantine facilities

Business details

By Dr Clive Dalton

Animal Enterprises (AE) importation

 Early in 1986 the livestock exporting company Animal Enterprises (AE) took what was described by Dr Jock Allison as ‘a very bold step’ of importing a plane load of live sheep of three main breeds - Finnish Landrace, Texel and East Friesian from about 70% of the same genetic sources in Denmark as MAF did for their second importation using frozen embryos and semen.

Information obtained from paper presented by Dr Jock Allison to NZ Institute of Primary Industry Management, December 2006

AE also brought in a few Gotland Pelt sheep and a few German White Headed Marsh sheep which were available, and somebody must have decided that they also looked like a good prospect for New Zealand. The ‘Marsh’ was not the same breed as the German White Headed ‘Mutton’ or Oldenburg, which came in the first MAF importation, and ended up in a large pit on Mana Island.
Dr Neil Clarke says they were both basically the same breed.
 Photo:  German White Headed Marsh.  Photo: Internet

 The total importation was made up of 301 ewes and 43 rams which on arrival went into a quarantine facility in the old stock yards of the closed down Southdown Freezing works in south Auckland.

Why were live sheep allowed in?

After all the effort that went into MAFTech’s second importation in 1984 to bring in frozen embryos and semen, the obvious question is why then did the Chief Veterinary Officer and the Maximum Security Quarantine Advisory Committee (MSQAC) approve the importation of live sheep again.  
 Had the rules changed in just two years while all the work of multiplying the MAF imported sheep was in full swing?

Dr Peter O'Hara.  Photo: Words and Pictures

I put this question to Dr Peter O’Hara who was CVO at the time, and he said that there were some practical problems in doing embryo recovery in Denmark and Sweden, not the least of which was the disquiet of the owners of the sheep that surgery was being done on them, as they were considered to be more pets than livestock!  
  
Given the quarantine protocol and facilities that were developed for an AE importation, MAF and MSQAC let AE bring the donors to New Zealand as live animals, provided they were all slaughtered at the end of the quarantine period.

Breeds and quarantine venue

Gotland Pelt.  Photo: Internet

The potential of the Finns, Texels and East Friesians to New Zealand was obvious, but many people wondered why New Zealand needed the Gotland Pelt?  Apparently at the time,  there was a very lucrative woolly pelt market, particularly for coloured ones.  Somebody must have had a vivid imagination!

The White Headed Marsh was very similar to the old Romney so could have had some value – if you stretched your imagination far enough!


At Southdown the ewes lived on dry concentrate rations and bedded on sawdust without sunshine or pasture. They lambed in February and March 1986, having been mated in the Northern hemisphere autumn in October. The company decided that it would not be possible to re-mate the ewes naturally in the 1986 year, but Jock Allison designed a very successful hormone regime for them, from which more than two thirds of the ewes lambed at 160% lambing.

But MAF bureaucratic protocols were not sheep friendly, and stated that the imported ewes had to end their days at Southdown in that alien environment, where only embryos could be collected for ET work at ‘another location’.  An island location was suggested, where the derived progeny would stay till the end of the 5 years minimal quarantine in February1991.

Business changes 

Dr Jock Allison resigned from MAF in 1968 to join AE, and three MAF technical staff followed him. Grant Shackell was one of them and especially skilled at ET work. 

Jock’s first main challenge was to persuade MAF to be more practical and cooperative, and agree to a secondary quarantine area that was suitable for sheep.  Jock says there were complaints from industry and even the NZ Veterinary Association, none of which were based on logic, and fortunately MAF stuck to their guns.

 Dr Jock Allison. Photo: Otago Daily Times

 Jock Allison said that in 1987 a newly listed company Cashmere Pacific agreed to purchase AE for an attractive price, but with the share market crash of that year, the company literally disappeared.  Fortunately for the company, the NZ Dairy Board (NZDB) took over AE, and the sheep importation project was renamed LambXL.  They appointed a General Manager (Mike Harman) and a Board of Directors.

With NZDB in control, their AI station at Awahuri near Palmerston North was the obvious site for a primary quarantine and ET facility with a secondary one on a farm near Cheltenham. 

Jock reported some wonderful tales of MAF bureaucratic nitpicking with their vets from Palmerston North who had a supervisory role of the station. 

  

Dr Robin Tervit said he helped with the ET work at Awahuri for LambXL after his employment by a company called Genestock collapsed.  Genestock was in the cattle embryo transfer business.

Photos: Dr Deric Charlton

New Zealand agricultural history. No 22. Importing exotic sheep breeds

Animal Enterprises (AE) importations 1986

Finn, Texel, East Friesian, Gotland Pelt, German White Headed Marsh

 Stupid quarantine fencing regulations by MAF

Arguments with MAF over release dates from quarantine

 By Dr Clive Dalton

 Information obtained from paper presented by Dr Jock Allison to NZ Institute of Primary Industry Management, December 2006.

Fencing stupidity

MAF regulations said there was to be a 2m high deer fence on the outside and a conventional boundary fence on the inside both 2m apart.  So MAF wanted to heighten the sheep boundary to deer height, and then add another conventional boundary fence on the inside. 

The cheaper option for AE ($5/m) was to leave the existing boundary and build a new deer fence inside that. Jock asked the bureaucrats if they thought there was any difference to an escaping sheep or one breaking in, if it met a ‘high-low’ fence combination compared to a ‘low-high’ one?

The Palmerston North Regional Veterinary Officer (RVO) David Lorne said he couldn’t go against the decisions of his staff and the Chief Veterinary Officer (CVO) in Wellington Peter O’Hara, as it would be ‘bad for morale’, which clearly was more important than the several hundred thousand dollars extra it was costing AE in fencing.   

Jock took his case to Director General Malcolm Cameron, a man not know for snap decisions, and even the Minister of Agriculture, but to no avail. The importance of staff morale reigned supreme over biosecurity and client requirements.

AE went on to have almost 20,000 sheep in quarantine as their major multiplication programme kicked in for sheep sales in New Zealand and Australia.  Jock said that common sense prevailed in the last two years of the programme, thanks to MAF Head Office vet Jim Edwards assuming responsibility for protocols.

Arguments with MAF over release dates

·      The Lamb XL Board was of the view that the more exotic breed animals which were generated, then the more money they would make assuming that it would be as easy to sell 5000 Texels for the same price as it would be to sell 1000, i.e. straight-lining the price irrespective of the numbers for sale. It was Jock’s opinion that the generation of very large numbers for sale would depress prices, which may not result in more money being made. 

·      The multiplication programmes of the imported sheep continued unabated, and at the end of the quarantine period some 20,000 animals (including all of the recipient ewes) were held in secondary quarantines. The project lost in excess of $10 million (due to poor demand), but Jock declares that this was the largest 'public-good' research programme ever undertaken on behalf of the New Zealand farmers. The trouble was – nobody saw the loss in this light.

·      Jock is adamant that the financial loss would have most likely been far more, if the release date had been a year after the MAF exotic sheep programme, as was decreed in the initial importation technical conditions for both programmes (see below)

Release Dates  

·      The release date of animals derived from the MAF 1985 importation of embryos was initially decreed to be 5 years from the transplanting of the first imported embryos, i.e. March 1990. Lamb XL was programmed to release their animals in February 1991, i.e. one breeding season after the MAF importation. The long quarantine was required because of Scrapie. 

·      In 1986, MAFTech was born and all advice from then on was provided on a ‘user-pays’ basis, so significant revenue was expected from the sale of rams and ewes from their second importation under Sheepac (See other blogs). 

·      Funding of the quarantine expenses for MAFTech continued to come from the public purse as was all the importation costs involved, unlike LambXL which was funded totally commercially.

·      Significantly the Lamb XL importation early in 1986 included sheep from about 2/3rds of the flocks from which MAF had purchased ewes and rams for their embryo recovery programme late in 1984. So LambXL with their continuing quarantine would have large numbers of animals 6 to 9 years of age being observed for the unlikely appearance of scrapie, while MAF’s animals derived from the same flocks would be released. 

·      Jock asked what would happen if scrapie turned up in LambXL’s older sheep? Clearly this situation didn’t make sense as logically both populations were the same from an animal health point of view, and simultaneous release at a specified time should have been allowed. 

·      Obviously MAFTech was not interested in the release at the same time of the LambXL animals, as they saw their expected revenue from Sheepac being diminished. AE argued that a simultaneous release date was technically sound, and it was in the sheep industry’s interest to have this situation. 

·      The logic was inescapable, and Jock presented a comprehensive case to the MSQAC about the situation, and MAFTech at a meeting strenuously disputed that they had some basis to justify early release. Jock said they had no technical basis for this, and after months of deliberation the MSQAC came to an interesting decision. 

Dr Peter O'Hara.  Photo: Words and Pictures

·      Instead of bringing the LambXL release forward, Peter O’Hara and Bruce Koller instructed MAFTech to keep their sheep in quarantine for a further 8 months with release in November 2000, with the LambXL release allowed at the same time. This was a huge boost to Lamb XL and caused significant increased expenditure of taxpayers dollars by MAFTech to maintain their sheep in quarantine waiting another 12 months for their expected income, as they had to wait another breeding season for their release. 

·      The LambXL sheep were sold to a wide range of clients all over New Zealand and some to Australia but with the company ending up in the red big time.

New Zealand agricultural history. No 27. Importing exotic sheep breeds

Breeds that survived after the importations

Texel; Finn; East Friesian

 By Dr Clive Dalton

The Texel

Texel ram in UK.  Photo: Don Clegg

 The Texel always looked a good prospect because of its meat, and when the world discovered the breed, it was in great demand, especially in UK were stud rams make unbelievable money (e.g 23,000 guineas), and rams have been so further selected on phenotype for meat conformation, that they are starting to look more like pigs with wool on!


The Rams are certainly a challenge for shearers when trying to bend their necks to tip them over. It's often a two-man job to tip large rams today with quite a bit of concern over health and safety of shearers.

The Texel has without doubt been the most successful of all imported breeds in New Zealand because of its meat conformation and lean carcass, and its main use now as a purebred is as a terminal sire, and as a 1/4 or 3/8 proportion in composites. The breed has garnered more hype than the other meat breed in New Zealand, although judging by ram sales at for example the Frankton Ram Fair in 2014, no Texels were on offer.  The main meat sire breeds sold were Poll Dorset and Suffolk.

But in terms of ‘efficiency’ of meat production efficiency (i.e. feed in and meat out), I reckon today’s Poll Dorset, Suffolk, South Suffolk, Southdown and Hampshire would be as good.  To test this we would need to resurrect the ghosts of the late Drs Alan Kirton and Barry Butler-Hogg, our revered meat scientists from Ruakura! Sadly there’s nobody around to do this sort of basic research any more, but it would be valuable to know how they all compare to sort out fact from advertising hype. 

The Texel also played a part in the drive to increase bulk in wool, thanks to its Cheviot genes which it acquired way back in its Dutch history.  In producing 'Growbulk' sheep, Dr Rowland Sumner at the Whatawhata Hill Country Research Station put Poll Dorset (as they had high-bulk wool), Texel and Romney together.  But Roland says the way the NZ clip has gone in recent times, the Texel has no special merit for bulk any more, as most coarse wools can meet the bulk specifications for the market.

The Finn

By the 1980s, the national lambing percentage had been given a dramatic a boost, and the Finn was given all the credit for this. 

There’s no doubt they had a major role with the and got major media coverage with their big visual impact of large litters of lambs from the purebreds (see picture at left). Supporters of the breed always point this out. 

But  most composites or 'stableised crossbreds' today have no more than a quarter Finn in them to restrict litter size to manageable levels for NZ.

The purebred Finn is said to have shown  a natural resistance to Facial Eczema which surprised everyone.  It was suggested that having evolved in a tough environment, they must have developed good immunity against toxins in general. This seems a bit stretched when it comes to FE as they have evolved as a housed breed for half of each year.

Coopworth breeder Edward Dinger who has selected for FE tolerance on MAF's Ramguard programme for 30 years, and who as a member of a group purchased 45 pure Finn rams at $1000 each, and farmed them successfully till FE hit.  He estimates the Finn tolerance is 'useful but low', and equivalent to a tolerance of about 0.3mg sporedesmin/kg live weight, when today's breeders have  sheep up to 0.6mg sporedesmin/kg live weight.

So the general statement that 'Finns show FE tolerance' may be true, but it's very dangerous if breeders selling them are not testing for FE on the Ramguard programme, and they don't state at what level of sporidesmin dosing the the rams have been tested.

Below are examples of 'general statements' which may be acceptable as 'advertising' but not as proven, tested and documented information in my view.

Robin Hilson in his 'One Stop Ram Shop' International Newsletter No 97, October 2013 makes the following claims regarding the Finn with the heading that ' All NZ ewes need a dash of Finn'!  These are the stated reasons:

 

Finn X ewes don't have bearings (except old ones)

Finn X ewes have some natural resistance to FE

Finn X ewes don't need flushing

Finn X ewes perform predictably

Finn X ewes produce few triplets

Finn X ewes carcasses yield well

Finn X ewes multiple suckle lambs

Finn is the most used sheep breed in the world

Robin describes the Finn as a browser rather than a grazing sheep, with 'excellent survival, longevity and productive repeatable performance'.  He also claims in 'One Stop Ram Shop' International Newsletter No 96, June 2013' that 'Finns, Texels, East Friesian crossbreeds make up 40% of the national flock and soon to be 50%'.  

I have had comments from other sheep breeders that a couple of these statements are true, two others are half true, and the rest are total advertising hype.

The East Friesian 

It’s interesting why all the hype associated with this breed, that there are not flocks of thousands of them throughout the country.
Why was their great potential for both fertility and milk production never fully exploited?  Their large body size  could also have boosted meat production, even if their wool potential was limited.   
But its effect as a purebred on the national flock is hardly measurable today, and there are no large commercial flocks of purebreds around 

Photo (left): East Friesian ewes from Jock Allison.

One commentator told me that the East Friesians in the first importation from a flock in UK seemed to be a fairly robust sheep and had seen a fair bit of pasture and fresh air. This contrasted greatly with the sheep brought in from Sweden by Dr Jock Allison, which had evolved in housed conditions for half of their lives, and were not robust enough as purebreds for NZ farming outdoor pasture conditions.  This I think is very fair comment.

John Dobbie who managed a flock of EF halfbreds commercially in the central North Island said that unless ewes were being sucked dry by twins or triplets, they had too much milk and  had big problems with mastitis.  Even 180% lambing was not high enough to milk them out, and avoid udder and mastitis problems he reckoned.  

John found that the EF component in a composite needed to be no higher than a  quarter  for most farming conditions. It's interesting that no composites on the market have any EF genes in them now.  Their most outstanding feature John says was their wonderfully quiet temperament.  They were great sheep to work with.

It was always too long a shot to expect the breed to lead a national surge into  dairy production, and even now where sheep are milked, the Poll Dorset and even Coopworths are used.  So the  contribution of the East Friesian to the New Zealand sheep industry, with an animal  before arrival was considered to have so much promise, has been hardly measurable. 

Five East Friesian breeders are listed with the NZ Sheep Breeders’ Association and three  breeders are in the Rare Breeds Conservation Society of NZ.

John Dobbie ONZM

But John Dobbie also makes a very important point, which is that when these new breeds came on stream, all the old Farm Advisory Officers like him had been morphed into ‘consultants’, and there’s no doubt that charging for advice’ killed their jobs.  

John reckons the East Friesian probably suffered most from this neglect of advisory support, as farmers didn’t get the hands-on experience to help them find the right niche  for the breed.

Free independent advice disappeared, and what was worse, these new consultants were 'pushing product' to claim 10% commission on sales, and even compete for the highest sales prize!  Totally stupid!

At the same time, the MAFTech research division was being gutted, so again there was no on-farm research being done which could have helped find the proper niche for the East Friesian, or to do some genetic work to select them for New Zealand outdoor pastoral conditions.

So the question remains - where are all the East Friesians these days after all the cost of bringing them in?